Facebook: The End to a Golden Era?

“I never use Facebook when I’m home,” says Jasmine Morano while cramming a fork load of spaghetti into her mouth.

Morano has just been offered a contract position with Facebook as a University Recruiter. After touring the grounds of the media giant’s headquarters, we scale the bottomless buffet for a variety of gratuitous tasty cuisines.  

“What I do is I go to college campuses and I basically talk to students who are interested in working with Facebook. I tell them what steps they need to take to become employed and help them figure out which department is their best match.” Of the few campuses she has visited, Morano is already beginning to take note of an unbeknownst trend among the young students. “Some of them don’t even use Facebook,” she says.

In recent months, teenage users have strayed from their Facebook homepages and are now focusing their attention on alternative media outlets. Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr are some of the many new social media services that are taking the younger generations by storm. The speculated reason for this gradual neglect of Facebook has been boiled down to privacy concerns, and not from the prying eyes of online predators, but from their very own mothers.

That’s right. Facebook users are yearning to cut that cyber umbilical cord for good. While older Facebook members have utilized their accounts as a means of socializing and stabilizing connections, it would appear that today’s youth feel otherwise. Apart from the occasional messaging, we are all guilty of using Facebook to advertise ourselves and to peer into the lives of others. And while your friends might know and applaud you as the life of the party, some things are best left unsaid to mom and dad.

Because social media seems to no longer be about socializing, but rather showcasing, teenagers have turned to more specified social media outlets that enable them to advertise their best selves. Instagram has given rise to the shameful “selfie” where we can enjoy the same awkward angle of a user’s face shadowed by a camera filter of choice and followed by a series of cliché hashtags. Twitter, on the other hand, is commonly used to spat out opinions, backlash, or a series of random nothings to be commented on by the public. And Tumblr, a blogger’s safe place to let emotions run wild without really being seen.  Rest assured, there’s a place for us all in the world of social media.

Many, myself included, feel Facebook has maybe grown too powerful and are intimidated by the emergent corporation. Facebook has acquired over 800 patents and is seeking ownership over a number of successful social media websites. As of this year Facebook will own four of the world’s most popular smartphone apps: Facebook itself, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Now there is talk of Facebook purchasing drones?

“Our PR department is going crazy with all the weird conspiracies people are coming up with,” says Morano.

Despite the dwindling interest, it remains clear to me as I fill my emptied purse with saran-wrapped plates of Facebook complimentary foods, that Zuckerberg’s empire is growing and here to stay.