I noticed about a year ago that Facebook is losing its relevance to young people. With my students, it used to be all Facebook all of the time. Recently, however, more and more of them say they don’t use Facebook and make disgusted faces when the word is mentioned. I almost never catch them sneaking peeks at Facebook as I walk around the classroom. Now it’s all Tumbler, Twitter, Instagram, and the occasional Wall Street Journal.
I wondered what happened to sour the younger generation on Facebook, and then I read an article (sorry, I can’t link right now but I will try to do it later) that explained this phenomenon. Kids are escaping from Facebook because it has been discovered by their parents. There is no point in having a Facebook wall if it will be monitored by a parent who is tactless and intrusive enough to want to invade every tiny little corner of an adolescent’s existence.
Clarissa's Blog 
I thought on Facebook you can have different levels of privacy for different people on your Friends list; people have done this for their bosses – put them on a setting where they can’t see every post that’s shared. Maybe things have changed, but I also thought you could even keep certain Facebook ‘friends’ from seeing everyone else on your friend’s list.
Granted, this doesn’t change the underlying parental attitude of wanting to see everything that’s going on; they’re just more superficial measures of granting some privacy (or illusion of privacy).
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I’m conflicted. On the one hand, if they can kill facebook it almost makes me stop hating helicopter parents more than tuberculosis and e coli put together.
On the other hand, those poor kids struggling to find some kind of private space, no matter how small or illusory, not invaded by their Stasi / NSA* parents….
I very much appreciate the (mostly benign) neglect of my own parents.
*and how sad it is that the US government is rapidly replacing East Frickin’ Germany(!!!!) as the paragon of government intrusion into citizens’ private spaces.
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Yes. And also because it is so 2005.
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Anyone who I’ve known under the age of 25 is far more active on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine and the like. Hell, I’ve seen more activity on LJ. And this was maybe 4-5 years ago.
Facebook is like your official web page and people under the age of 25 if they have friends on it “friend” pretty much everyone they know (Because really, a thousand friends? You’re not that close to that many people) And it takes enormous amounts of thinking to figure out which groups need or want to hear what. I don’t even post half the stuff that occurs to me.
Online bullies don’t stick to Facebook: Guide to online apps for parents
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Facebook’s also lost its appeal because rather than being a way to keep up with what your friends are doing, you mainly see stupid memes, your parents’ friends pictures of their children, or boring, tame, highly censored updates about stuff like marriages, graduations, and nothing that could potentially court controversy or excitement.
Plus, it’s easier to dodge your parents on Tumblr by just changing your username to your blog when they catch you. 🙂
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So true! I barely visit my Facebook page because I hate all the annoying memes that people keep posting. There is a limit on how many cute kittens one can stare at in a day.
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My life became so much better after I blocked George Takei’s and Upworthy’s crap from appearing in my Facebook updates.
The only reason I haven’t deleted mine entirely is because Facebook messenger’s a very handy way for my roommate and I to swap stories with each other, since neither of our phones’ text messaging systems allow for posting URLs.
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For me, I find Twitter much more convenient now than Facebook. FB is usually just irritating to use and every time I try to be on there for a long period of time, it just ends up being a waste of time especially seeing a lot of stuff I don’t care about and the whole annoying process of having to send friend requests.
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Wanted to ask if you had heard about the two bombings in Volgograd in Russia.
Regarding Russia:
The White House delegation will include an openly gay athlete: tennis great Billie Jean King.
It will not include the president, first lady or the vice president, all who headed the previous four Olympic delegations, or a cabinet secretary, only a former one. This marks the first Olympics since the 2000 Sydney Summer Games that a U.S. president, vice president, first lady or former president has not been a member of the delegation for the opening ceremony, which will be Feb. 7 in Sochi.
AND
U.S. athletes have competed in every Summer Olympic Games in the modern era, except the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, which was boycotted. [wiki]
Is it simply the continuation of the Cold War? I find it hard to believe that Obama and the rest of politicians care deeply about rights of gays in Russia. If USA cares so much about human rights, what about China’s Olympics in 2008? As if China isn’t much worse from human rights point of view than Russia. Even you will agree, it isn’t worse, hopefully.
I have relatives in Russia, love the culture (my mother tongue, literature, we lived in USSR, etc.) and singling out the country under pretext of human rights got on my nerves.
-el
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Of course, Obama can’t snub China. The Chinese hold the majority of the US foreign debt. And as we say, whoever pays for a gentleman’s dinner gets to dance with him. 🙂
At the same time, I don’t get a feeling that the Russian people care that much about these Olympics. Putin cares, it is his pet project, and Obama is snubbing Putin, not the Russian people.
If I were Obama, I would also avoid visiting a country where the #1 international news on THE state channel with all-national viewership were whether my husband refuses to sleep with me.
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Another news story:
The 2013 World Youth Chess Championships just held in Abu Dhabi have been marred by the scandalous behaviour of the 120 national Chess Federations that agreed to compete against Israeli players as an unidentified group under the banner of FIDE – the World Chess Federation.
[…] The United Arab Emirates (UAE) like most Arab countries, does not recognize Israel. In 2009, the country denied Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe’er a visa to compete in the Dubai Tennis Championships, garnering widespread condemnation.
[…] Yet “Palestine” is a member of the World Chess Federation and was represented by two players whose country was designated as “Palestine”.
The ultimate insult to individual Israeli competitors was the failure to list their country as “Israel” in the players’ biographies. Instead they were identified as citizens of “FIDE” – a place with no capital, area or population.
[…] Barack Obama and the European Union share a common silence in failing to raise their voices in protest against delegations from their respective member Federations acting in this manner.
[…] Will this practice now become acceptable at all future international meetings where Israelis attend?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14311#.UsFnMJuIrcs
In Israeli newspaper was written that United Arab Emirates wants “to be with, but feel without.” Meaning, have Israelis too for international reasons, but feel as if we aren’t there. 😦
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