Breaking News: the new Facebook is here to stay. Forever. Panic. Before, users had the option to switch to the new Facebook or stick with the old version. Now, we can’t even do that. Instead, we’re stuck with an ugly new design that is supposed to make the social network easier to navigate. Breaking news: Facebook’s 100 million users don’t think so. The change has enraged Facebook’s worldwide community, from seventh graders to middle-aged parents. Every time I log on, I see people’s disappointed status updates: “Joe Smith is hate the new Facebook.” Piles of groups invites make my way. “1,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK INTERFACE!!!” “5,000,000 against the new version of Facebook (Please Forward)” Millions of users are using petitions to get the old look back. It’s getting serious. The other day I was doing homework in the library lobby near the Macintosh laptops. I heard a girl on the laptop exclaim, “Oh my God, new Facebook is permanent now.” Other voices chimed in: “No way!” “What are we going to do?” Soon there was a crowd of people gathered around the laptop, staring in disbelief and outrage over a layout change. Are we so infatuated with and dependent on Facebook that the new redesign causes us this much distress? We need to reassess our love affair with Facebook. We wait and constantly check to see if our friends have posted anything on our walls, if anyone we like friend requested us, or if people have commented on our photos. We crave our next computer pit stop between classes. And when doing homework, we usually have Facebook open in the background. Why are writing notes and tagging people so addictive? Why do we spend so much time finding the perfect profile picture? We base our popularity on how many ‘friends’ we have, the number of wall posts we receive, and how many pictures we are tagged in. We use the site to check out that new PG on campus, to look at all his photos and see who writes on his wall. We surreptitiously read people’s wall-to-wall’s. We are addicted. I’m not suggesting that anyone stop using Facebook completely. It’s great for connecting with friends and sharing ideas, photos and more. But we should all just take a step back and think: Do we really want our lives to be dictated by a website? Julie Xie is a three-year Upper from Andover, Mass. jxie@andover.edu
