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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. |
| | II. Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure |
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< | Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure on two levels. The first is direct: Facebook itself is an unproductive use of time. In order to begin using the website, people must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making it and maintaining it. |
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> | Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure on two levels. The first is direct: Facebook itself is an unproductive use of time. |
| | Additionally, Facebook has added "applications" over time that. These include games that can be played against other Facebook users, such as chess or Scrabble, as well as activities like making "stickers" to post on other profiles or even raising digital pets. Importantly, these activities are all publicly recorded on the user's profile. Anyone viewing can see your win/loss record in Scrabble, for example. |
| | Comments are welcome. |
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< | Section I |
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> | Introduction |
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> | The incredibly popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption, this paper will analyze Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. |
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> | Conspicuous Leisure Among Young Adults |
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Subsection B
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> | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. It is currently expanding in scope to include older and younger demographics, but the majority of its users are college students and recent graduates. Due to its origins, Facebook is inextricably tied to college, and even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. Veblen viewed education (particularly in the humanities) as evidence of wasted time. In contemporary American society, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. It shows that one's family is able to afford the expensive tuition and moreover that one can afford to forego any significant income for several years. When your information appears to viewers on Facebook, the colleges you have attended are listed directly under your name. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. |
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> | However, since most Facebook users (and certainly most college students' peers) are college students themselves, simply attending college is not enough to make a favorable invidious comparison. Further, since college students typically do not have a significant income, the manner of conspicuous consumption employed by the greater society is not entirely applicable to this demographic. College students are generally unable to engage in pecuniary emulation by buying expensive cars or houses, for example. Instead, college students can engage in pecuniary emulation through conspicuous leisure activities. Facebook allows users to "keep up with the Joneses" by keeping a record of the time they waste and the activities on which it is wasted. The website accomplishes this by offering direct opportunities to publicly waste time and also by recording other leisure activities that were not accomplished through the site. |
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> | Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure |
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> | The first way in which Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure is directly. The website itself presents numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Importantly, though, Facebook has two messaging options. Users can send private messages, or they can write a message publicly on another user's "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its true value. It allows users to waste time publicly and provides evidence of social status, implying other leisure activities. |
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> | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting your friends to, for example, complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Each of these applications keeps a detailed record of your activities. My Facebook profile, for example, shows my win/loss record in chess, and ranks me against other users. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time you have spent using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users. |
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< | Section II |
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> | Facebook as a Marker of Other Leisure |
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< | Subsection A |
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> | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted the time they did not waste directly on the site. |
| | Subsection B |