Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are like separate chat rooms for specific purposes. Sports teams, volunteer groups, and businesses create their own pages in order to organize and inform people about events. This can help connect people, but it can also turn people away from groups or clubs that they might otherwise be involved in.

Information posted on Facebook groups is visible to everyone on that group. This is convenient for record keeping. If a member of a club like National Honors Society has a problem updating their hours sheet or getting directions to an event, then asking for help on the group page is a way to demonstrate responsibility. Even if communication doesn’t go through on time, there is a record of effort made on the member’s behalf.

Facebook groups are also a way to reliably send information to everyone in a club. In groups like Kiwanis Club, in-person member meetings can be difficult to coordinate because people often have other obligations in the school or community. It is easy to accidentally miss members in a mass text or email about an upcoming event, and reminders on school announcements are too brief to effectively communicate all of the club events happening on campus. Facebook groups are effective because it is the members’ responsibility to sign up for the group. Once they are on, they receive notifications whenever officers create events or post reminders. Through Facebook, officers can easily communicate with clubs that include over 100 people. Even non-officers can suggest events and ideas to the whole group through Facebook pages.

Even in the adult world Facebook groups are ideal for coordinating volunteers for community events like the All Souls Procession. Information about fundraisers, the event schedule, and other ways to get involved are available on the pages. When people “like” pages, their friends are notified. This way, information about community events can spread by word of mouth in addition to public fliers and official news reports.

Facebook groups are also an appropriate place for inside jokes and team bonding that might be awkward and exclusive if they were publicly visible. Someone involved in the high school swim team might not necessarily understand or relate to the quirky, Celtic-oriented nerdy vibe of the Tucson Highlanders. Each group page reflects the individual vibe of the group, and this helps people within these groups get to know each other better. Bands, teams, and even volunteer organizations perform better and are more enjoyable to be a part of when the people involved know and like each other.

However, team bonding can go too far. Facebook groups can become invasive; too much contact can make people stop liking each other. For example, even though I love my best friend, if I hung out with her nonstop for several weeks in a row, we would fight. I don’t like the people in my Facebook groups as much as I love my BFF, so excessive contact with them is more likely to drive me insane. In many cases, if I’m not contacting them on my own, it’s because what they have to say isn’t extremely important to me.

Here are a few points that I plan on discussing further:

-Just another thing to keep track of in world bombarded with emails, texts, calls, IMs, and other social networking sites. People involved in community tend to be overachievers to begin with- why add to the plate with something else they need to keep track of?

-Online etiquette is different than face-to-face contact. Personalities can be misrepresented, communicating without visual cues can cause conflict because the tone of a conversation can be misinterpreted, and overall people tend to think less about each other’s feelings when they are not right next to each other.