“I live or die by facebook.com!” a freshman at CU told me. His statement reveals the extent to which today’s college students depend on emerging websites that have become as indispensable as textbooks on college campuses.
College students have long viewed the Web as a research tool, a mailbox and a jukebox. But now they embrace the Web for the social opportunities and entertainment it offers, specifically tailored for them.
Anyone not in college today must wonder how a student could “live or die” by a website. Facebook.com allows students to locate and interact instantly with one another. Any student can construct a flattering profile that may include a picture, contact info, “favorite” lists (music, movies, books and quotes), political views and relationship status.
You can search the site for other students (e.g., old high school buddies or girlfriends) and ask them if they want to join your group of friends. If so, your own and your friends’ profiles are linked, and others can view mini-photos of all your pals. If you’re romantically involved with a particular student, you can ask if he or she is willing to make the relationship public on facebook.com. Should the person accept, the world will instantly know that the two of you are together (and breaking up becomes infinitely more difficult).
Given these features, the CU freshman’s “live or die” reasoning begins to make sense. As he puts it: “I met one girlfriend through facebook.com, and lost another because of it. All my friends are on the site, but annoying strangers haunt me on it. Facebooking is either a dangerous waste of my time (death), or a remarkably efficient use of it (life).”
On facebook.com, unlike similar websites like myspace.com, members use their real names. If I meet a charming girl at a party or remember the name of my best friend in fifth grade, I can easily look up their profile and contact them. Facebook.com is a source of status (the number of “friends” you have indicates your popularity), friendship (you can find students who share your interests with a single mouse-click), and social interaction (the site can easily be used to arrange meetings with others). So it’s hardly surprising that today’s undergraduates say “I’ll facebook you” instead of “I’ll call you.”
While facebook.com continues to blossom, another website has taken root in the fertile grounds of America’s campuses. Catering almost exclusively to college students, Denver-based ManiaTV.com is the world’s first live Internet television network, broadcasting music videos, short films and sport clips on demand, 24 hours a day. ManiaTV! encourages viewers to submit their own videos and to communicate in chat rooms with the CJs (cyber-jockeys), who sometime cut music videos mid-song due to negative feedback.
To achieve its goal of becoming the “Viacom of the Internet,” ManiaTV! aggressively markets to college students. Its 125 campus marketers, dubbed “campus Maniacs,” talk up the website at universities, hand out T-shirts at concerts, and publicize such contests as a ManiaTV! “streak-a-thon” in which fans submit videos of themselves streaking in different settings.
Young people are both the consumers and the producers of these innovative websites. Facebook.com was founded two years ago by three Harvard students to provide an online community for their school. It now has more than 3.5 million users. A tour of ManiaTV!’s 15,000-square-foot warehouse near Interstate 70 in Denver reveals it is staffed almost entirely by energetic twenty-somethings. These young people know what their peers want, and they provide it in spades. After visiting 90 college campuses this past year, ManiaTV! watched its audience swell from 1 million in March to 1.6 million in July.
Our parents’ generation probably believes that even though the search for friends and lovers once consumed untold time and energy, their discovery was all the sweeter because of the effort expended to find them. But the emerging generation likes to make connections as rapidly as possible, regardless of how superficial these connections may be. Before entering college, some freshmen will have acquired dozens of “friends,” despite the fact that they are complete strangers in the real world.
While facebook.com gave me a sense of who my roommates are and which classmates share my interests even before I arrived on campus, I think it’s about time that I introduce myself with a handshake and not the click of a mouse. Maybe then I’ll invite them to my dorm for some popcorn and ManiaTV!.
Michael Koenigs, a graduate of Regis Jesuit High School, is currently a freshman at Harvard University.
