Nicole Dellolio – Special to Southern News –
Jordyn DiNale, a sophomore marketing student at SCSU, said college students are obsessed with social networking, especially Twitter and Facebook.
DiNale said she has a Twitter and Facebook, and uses it to stay connected with her friends while they’re away at school. Nowadays when people have nothing to do, they just go on the computer and look at what other people are doing, said DiNale.
“It’s funny because even though I don’t like either of them, I still find myself looking at them when I’m bored to see what other people are talking about,” said DiNale.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 with the intent of making the world feel more connected so people could socialize online, according to the Facebook ‘about’ page. It had approximately 955 million users at the end of June, and is still steadily increasing.
DiNale said Facebook is more personal than Twitter because users can put up pictures and can express their feelings and what is on their mind. Twitter is basically like having a conversation with yourself because people can’t comment on what they are writing about, said DiNale.
“Facebook asks you what’s on your mind, while Twitter asks what’s happening,” said DiNale. “So when people post their feelings on Twitter, it bothers me because if I wanted to know that I would just go onto Facebook.”
Twitter is unique because people are now able to interact with celebrities and “Tweet” at them, said DiNale.
Just consider this: social networking has become one of the biggest mobile activities that now reaches a third of the United States, according to the Comscore, a social media website.
Patricia Kraszeqska, a junior history and liberal studies student at SCSU, said she does not see the difference between these two social networking sites. Both of these websites are just places where people can socialize with one another on the internet, said Kraszeqska.
“From what I understand, Twitter is for everyday use,” said Kraszeqska. “I only have a Facebook because I do not need another distraction in my life and heard about it before Twitter therefore I stuck with it.”
Kraszeqska said that she tries to stay away from social networking and knows little about Twitter, unlike other college students.
Twitter has even been incorporated with Southern by the page labeled “SCSU Problems.” This webpage gives students the opportunity to share their concerns and problems that they have at Southern, while connecting to other students.
Jake Champagne, a junior business student at SCSU, said students use social networking so they can be technologically advanced so they can know everything that is going on.
“Nothing ever really changes on them,” said Champagne. “People are obsessed so much with it, that they get anxiety if they can’t log in.”
Champagne said that people in the computer labs on campus are always checking their social networking sites and that some people use it for determining how popular they are by how many “friends” or “followers” they have. These websites play a huge role in high school students because that age group always wants more attention on themselves, said Champagne.
“It seems like girls use and check these websites more than guys do,” said Champagne. “They always want to know what’s going on with their friends and celebrities.”
