Literacy in the Facebook Era - Waray Dictionary and Language ...

Fullmer 2
The face that graced Time Magazine’s “2010 Person
of the Year” issue has not been, until recently, widely
recognizable. The phenomenon that earned his likeness on
the magazine cover, however, is so ubiquitous as to hardly
need introduction. The person: Mark Zuckerberg. The
phenomenon: Facebook, the social networking website at
the center of the so-called “Web 2.0” movement which is
reshaping our sense of community, identity, discourse, and
the line between public and private life. As New York Times
writer Clive Thompson puts it, communicating through
Facebook is a new kind of social interaction, “like being
physically near someone and picking up on his mood
through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of
your eye.”
In 2010, Facebook membership continues to grow worldwide, but this year the Philippines is
one of the countries experiencing the most growth, alongside Portugal, Indonesia, Thailand, Poland
and Bulgaria (Another Look at Filipino Facebook Stats, 2010). 19 million Filipinos now have
accounts (putting membership at 6 th in the world, behind only the United States, Indonesia, the
United Kingdom, Turkey and France). The average user visits the site 20 times in a month and
spends an average of 28 minutes per visit (Philippines Facebook Statistics, 2010). It is therefore no
surprise that sociologists and anthropologists are paying close attention to the sociocultural
repercussions of the Facebook Era.
But given that 44 percent of Pinoy users are in the 18-24 age bracket—college students and
recent graduates—it behooves Filipino educators to pay attention as well. How is the advent of
Facebook changing how our students read, learn, and think? How is it changing how they
conceptualize their world?
For many teachers, our immediate response to these questions is pessimistic: we have
decided that students no longer read anything substantive but instead waste their time texting their
BFF messages like this: 1
heheheh ur D bEsT thx 4 cMiNg 2 d pArTy 2nite!!! :)
1 “BFF” is a common texting abbreviation for “Best Friend Forever”