It seems so trite, but what they say is true: nobody likes change. I’m not talking about the kind of change that takes the form of gross green-tinted coins – though I’m not, by any means, endorsing said gross coins. I’m talking about the change that David Bowie and 2Pac sang about; the kind of change that has punished high school and college students nationwide, leaving little room for hope or reason. I’m talking about the New Facebook.
It was little over a week ago when I first encountered the New Facebook. It started off just like any other regular day, as most days do. For basically any Choate student, that pretty much consists of hitting the snooze button at least twice before actually waking up, dreading the thought of a pop quiz on last night’s reading, wondering what exactly was in that casserole you ate at lunch, and most importantly, looking forward to reading the 12 new notifications on Facebook as soon as you can get to a computer.
Imagine my surprise then – after logging in dutifully and waiting for Choate’s “new and improved” server to load the page – when I found what was once a simple, familiar site turned into an infectiously slow, unnecessarily complicated monster of a page. I retyped the URL, hoping perhaps that it was just a fluke of network protection or a typo on my part. After checking and rechecking the link over and over again for a good ten minutes, I slowly began to realize what had happened.
This New Facebook is of an entirely different concept, complete with multi-tab navigating, a completely altered definition of the Wall, and annoying advertisements often exceeding actual page elements in the layout. It is significantly slower, much harder to navigate, and not at all an improvement over the old layout we have grown to love over the years.
Now I know some of you, like me, refuse to navigate through multiple tabs and wait through five minutes of lag just to see your newest Bumper Sticker or friend request. Facebook, like much in our day and age, has become too complicated and advanced – even for its most ardent supporters and users. The developers thought they could eliminate clutter and make browsing through the site more convenient, but they have managed only to over-think the process and make things worse for everyone on the user side of the website. In the meanwhile, they’ve lost many a dedicated user somewhere in the virtual labyrinth existing between the seemingly endless tabs.
Maybe administrators and teachers and parents all over the country are rejoicing because their students will no longer procrastinate or expose themselves to the realm of Internet stalkers and cyber abuse. Maybe young people our age will get off their computers and engage in face-to-face communication, not confined to Wall-to-Wall messaging. Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a replacement site that brings us back to the good old days, before the thousands of Application invites and mini-feeds and bizarre ads.
Whatever the case, I believe that the New Facebook – and the controversy and resistance enveloping it – is a good indicator of the direction that our society in general is headed towards. We’ve definitely come a long way since the age of letters and the occasional telegraph. But with that progress comes change. And as I stated earlier, nobody likes change. It permeates our everyday lives and makes it increasingly difficult to predict what tomorrow will be like.
