Facebook Generation

By: Michele Di Salvo

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

We are all on social media now. It is pointless to claim that we do not have a profile or that we do not use it, because social media talks about us anyway, and there is certainly someone who does so. Our first and last names, a comment, a sentence we said, a photo with friends... just try searching for your first and last name on Google and you'll find that social media is among the top results, even for those who don't have a profile. How is this possible? Simple. These sites have ceased to be what they once were and have become real parallel communication channels. They dynamically intersect our relationships and information, even if not necessarily direct, and “produce” new results that no one has directly introduced or entered. Through the dynamic creation of cross-referenced content, it is not only relationships and related information that are “evident”, but also all the derived information (who was with whom, how many users were at that school in that year, how many people who do not know each other read a particular newspaper, how many have taken a particular trip to a certain country visiting certain museums, bars, restaurants, etc.) that in turn create relationships. One of the specific functions in the “search for people you may know” is in fact through school, studies, city, friend of... if anything, through a chain of relationships that does not even really exist, but simply through “similar or related data”.