I don’t believe that this article necessarily argues that Facebook has completely diminished the barrier between our private and public lives. What I do believe is that John Harris thinks many people have misunderstood the purpose of Facebook to the point where it could be annoying. John wasn’t against the idea of Facebook being a platform where university students could get to know each other, he was against the fact that people in society have developed a social media habit where documenting everything that goes on in their lives could be a little annoying. Harris says that he sometimes sees himself getting carried away because he says “I am a habitual tweeter, and I know that I post too much, and that it gets in the way of far too many experiences.” By “getting in the way,” he means that he has noticed his bad habit of automatically turning to Twitter when something excites him rather than just experiencing it like old era human beings. Later in the article Harris also adds that “Social media comes down to an endless series of competitions, with prizes in the form of attention: likes, friends, comments.” The significance of mentioning that social media has become a “competition” is significant because it shows the reader how people compete with each other behind a computer screen just to grab attention. Seeking more attention is definitely a negative impact in our society because the truth is not everybody is famous, we’re just normal people. The fact that people can’t accept that and still strive for attention on social media shows that some people definitely misunderstood the intentional use of Facebook. However, I don’t believe John Harris is arguing that the barrier between our public and private lives has completely diminished.

I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I opened my first Facebook account, but it was in middle school. I used it to upload silly pictures of me and my sister and nothing else until I opened an Instagram in my freshman year of high school. I still use it until this day to post pictures of my family/friends and just to look at other people’s pictures. However, I do believe that it has negatively impacted me. I say this mainly because in high school, instead of meeting new friends like I would when I was a younger child, I met them on social media first. The first few weeks were absolutely boring until people attempted to start talking to me because they “knew me from Instagram.” I’m pretty sure they knew me from school first, but they must’ve been shy.