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Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Is our generation defining Facebook, or is it defining us?

Released Friday, “The Social Network” describes the genesis of what became an international phenomenon that birthed a new kind of information highway that made instant online news almost too slow.

Facebook has redefined our culture. It has saturated pop culture with a vigor like almost nothing else has. It has forced us to reevaluate our standards of privacy and created a generation in the making.

The recently released movie begs the question, is our generation ready to be defined by nothing more than ambiguous status updates, untagged photos that await us somewhere in the depths of cyberspace and “25 things you probably didn’t know about me” virtual notes?

Are we complacent enough to define an entire generation of perpetual interconnectedness on an information highway without a speed limit with the ever-looming notion of our voluntary abdication of privacy?

Or do we champion the notion that this website will be the demarcation of our generation as the one that brought the world together in a unique interconnectedness the world had never before dreamed of?

Regardless of how you see it, we realize critics and social scientists are already comparing “The Social Network” as a generation-defining moment in our history comparable to what the genius of John Hughes and “The Breakfast Club” did for Generation X and what “Rebel Without a Cause” did for the 1950s.

It’s time to define ourselves, Gators. Go update those statuses.

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