One point that Miller makes about how Facebook does not immediately demand attention, as posts are semi-public  not aimed at specific individuals (p. 151) is outdated. As was mentioned in class, the prevalence of mobile devices has changed how sites that have remained this long are used. Since you can receive direct messages, group messages, notifications, and even video calls through Facebook, it is demanding of your immediate attention. What is interesting to me is how Facebook seems to continue to accommodate public and private interactions, and of course ones that cannot be strictly defined as either. In addition to enabling more forms of and more instantaneous interpersonal (and frequently one on one) interactions, the more public side of Facebook has also grown. In class we briefly mentioned Facebook’s role as a news source, and I’d like to add that recently political/social engagement has also been enabled by Facebook’s “Giving Funds” feature. As Miller notes, comparative anthropology on SNS is not very insightful to only compare dominant forms of SNS, but rather to look at the usage on one SNS across regions (p. 151). What I alluded to above, is that looking at variation in usage and even the platform itself across time can be insightful as well. As Miller notes the digital allows for rapid social change and transformation (p. 146), at a speed unlike what we have seen before. So I think that it is important to contextualize, and even historicize if you want to think about it that way, SNS in their previous iterations and original intended uses.

Miller’s insistence that SNS resemble something more similar to kinship studies is at odds with other conceptualizations that try to emphasize the dichotomy between “Net and Self” and “online and offline” (p. 147). I would have to agree with this, as I don’t think these dichotomies accurately describe how people use and understand SNS and other technologies. Personally, I have found myself to become increasingly reliant on digital technology as well as SNS, even before the pandemic. As Kimberly Hassel explained, in Japan the word (which I am forgetting at the moment) for mobile devices translates to something that describes this technology as something more intimate and personal. I wonder if it is understood or conceptualized as an extension of the self, as I often think about my mobile devices. To expand on that, I think the amount of personal data and the communication and other functions that a mobile device enables makes it seem like an extension of the self.