Mona J. Barnes Written Analysis 5 on my topic of Facebook

            In choosing Facebook as my Popular Culture topic I have come to realize that media as we know it has changed.  In the past there were newspapers, the six o’clock news, radio, and magazines.  People couldn’t wait to get either their local newspapers for updates on what is happening in their communities, or their Sunday papers to get a more in depth worldly news summary of the past week. 

            Today there is a new way of getting that same information, still via the ways listed above but also faster and with online feeds from those same publications, and social media.  This includes Facebook, Twitter, and the other entire fast, on the go sites that give you up to the minute, as-it-is-happening news.  Today along with this, you get pictures of the grandkids that you would have previously had to wait for in the mail, up to the minute updates on your favorite television shows, and your family and friends all in one place and you can reply just as quickly.

            You can buy and sell popular culture items like Barbie, matchbook cars, so many things with online yard sales that are run through the Facebook application on your computers and mobile devices.  Things have become popular and reached far more people through Facebook than in stores.  You are actually not only reacting to popular culture, you are inventing it.  I have become more aware of the commercialism as well as the personal advantages and disadvantages of social media.  Businesses use Facebook applications to not only bring items to your attention for sale or discussion but basically create what they think should be brought to our attention and what merits attention.  They use Facebook as a tool to mold your opinions to what they want them to be. 

            I have become more aware that I need to become more aware of what I am being told, the source of the story or item, and the validity of it.  I initially thought of Facebook as a way to keep in touch with my family and friends, old and new.  Not I believe there is actually a darker or more underlying story to how Facebook presents itself, what it decides we need to see, and even the way in which we will see it.  I have learned to look more critically at these social media applications.  I believe that they can be dangerous to young minds in a way that shapes their thoughts as opposed to letting them decide for themselves.  In only getting the view the sponsors of the site want you to see, you may be blinded to what is really being done to your thought process and formation of values and morals.