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Virtually Inseparable
By Alisson Clark (BSJ '98)
If you graduated before 2005, today's UF students have a question for you: How did you do it?
How did you keep in touch with your friends back home, get to know your roommates, form a study group or find out
which classes to take? How did you find out about upcoming events and who was attending them? When you threw a party,
how did anyone know about it?
For the digital natives now attending UF, it's hard to fathom doing any of these things without social networks. Just
ask sophomore Veronica Kwiatkowski.
As an incoming freshman, the biology major from Plantation joined more than 74,856 members of the UF network on Facebook
to get an inside look at college life. Since then, she's used Facebook to carve her own niche amid a sea of undergrads.
"I wanted to find a bunch of people at UF and start making connections," Kwiatkowski says. "I found people who had graduated
from my high school who were at UF. It helped to see what they were doing and have some contacts before I moved to Gainesville."
Reaching Out
Once available only to college students — the site began as a kind of online yearbook in a Harvard dorm room — Facebook
is the primary social network among college students, who represent about half of its 150 million users worldwide.
When Kwiatkowski needed a chemistry tutor, she used a Facebook application to find an acquaintance who could help. When she
needed a tennis partner, she found a Facebook group for that, too.
"I've meet people I never would have known without Facebook," she says.
Beyond socializing, Facebook permeates nearly every aspect of college life. Several colleges have Facebook pages, as do student
groups, which use social networking to update members on activities and projects.
Kara Dawson, an associate professor of education who studies social networks, first noticed her students' affinity for the
sites in 2005.
"I teach in a computer lab, and immediately after coming into class I'd see the students checking Facebook. The minute we
took a break they'd be back on. It's almost like what we used to do with school newspapers," she says.
Facebook offers more than 100 UF-oriented affinity groups, from "While it was wrong, that UF student kinda, sorta deserved
to get Tased" to "UF ... We're basically the champions of life." Some of the groups the medical students had joined, however,
were not as innocuous: "Doctors Looking for Trophy Wives," for example.
A New Skill Set
Dawson sees the network as a catalyst for social activism on campus, with students forming and joining groups for causes
worldwide.
"There were huge groups during the election," Dawson says. "Social activism can be a positive."
The negatives include a new and potentially endless outlet for procrastination. But while students are dabbling in social
networks, they're also gaining skills they'll need in the workforce, Dawson says.
"Parents and older generations tend to see no value in their kids being on social networks," she says, "but they are
interacting and developing 21st century skills. When this generation goes out into the workforce, they're going to need
to create and collaborate and communicate online. They're learning those skills through social networks."
Dawson says students can benefit from online networking.
"I encourage people to try social networks before they decide they're not a good thing," she says. "I think they have
more positives than negatives."
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