Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Social Media Essay


Negative Effects of Facebook
What’s on your mind? Such a personal question, yet over a billion people answer that very question on a daily basis. As of December 31, 2012 Facebook has accumulated 1.06 billion users (Facebook). Facebook is used for many things; status updates, photo albums, comments, likes, timelines, advertisements, the list goes on. While Facebook can serve as a great tool to stay in contact with friends and family, both down the street and across the world, it can also have some negative effects on society as a whole.  Not only can Facebook take away the privacy of people and cause problems in both our personal and professional lives, it can also distract us from more important things in life, and keep us from living in the moment. It is for these reasons that Facebook is a detriment to society.
            Founded on February 4, 2004, Facebook’s mission is to “make the world more open and connected” (Facebook). Created by a Harvard student, the site’s original purpose was to connect the students in his school. The site is now one of the largest sites in the world with over 400 million people visiting each month (Carlson). Facebook serves as a great tool for staying connected to friends and family. Members can comment, message, tag, and post photos of themselves and others to tell the story of their lives. With the click of a button, you can find anything from where a person goes to school and where they live, to what they had for lunch that day. With such vast amounts of information available to people at all times, it makes it easy to stay in touch. This can be great for people who live away from their families, or have friends in other parts of the world, but it also makes it easier for people to find things you may not want them to find.
            Privacy issues have plagued users of Facebook since its beginning.  Even with almost constant updates to their privacy policies, Facebook has always had issues in this department. While users control most of what is being made available to those on the outside, hackers can infiltrate someone’s account with even the strictest privacy settings and learn almost anything about them. Privacy International, a watchdog organization, conducted a report on 23 Internet service companies to evaluate their privacy policies. They charged Facebook with severe privacy flaws and placed them in the second lowest category for “substantial and comprehensive privacy threats” (“A Race to the Bottom,” 2007).  The obvious solution to this problem would be to not put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want someone to see. Many people do not realize, but once you put something on the web, it is there forever. It cannot be erased.
            In addition to privacy issues, many people suffer from problems created in both their personal and professional lives from the result of using Facebook. With everyone always constantly looking to see what everyone else is doing, problems are bound to arise. They can be as simple as someone getting their feelings hurt or becoming jealous, to something more serious, such as cyber bullying. Especially in school age children, bullying is on the rise and is taking place less in the classroom and more so on the internet. With the anonymity that Facebook allows, children can verbally and mentally abuse one another with almost no consequences. The use of Facebook can also affect adults in their professional lives.  Many employers are now looking at prospective employees Facebook and other account pages to see the types of people they plan to hire. If someone has negative or controversial content on their page, it may keep them from getting a job, or in some cases, may cause them to lose a job they already have.
            When is the last time you went a whole day without using the internet? How long can you go without checking your email or updating your status? For many people, they could not imagine a world in which they are not constantly connected to others at all times. Facebook is contributing to this problem. We, as a society, are so concerned with what everyone else is doing all of the time that we fail to live in the here and now. Walk into any restaurant and I can almost guarantee that most of the people who are eating are also using cellphones or laptops. They are talking, texting, or surfing the web. Very few of them are likely to be having a face to face conversation with someone without the distraction of a phone or computer. In the fast paced world that we live in, most people are multitasking at all times. There never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done and make everyone happy all at the same time. Think back to 10 years ago, before Facebook was even a thought. Could you make it through your day without knowing what your friends had for lunch? Yes, you could, and you could now too if you just lived in the present moment. Log off, sign out, and live in the moment.
            While most would argue that Facebook has revolutionized the way we communicate with one another and brought us together, it has done nothing but push people further apart and create more problems than it has solved. As Albert Einstein once said, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Only when we decide to end our addiction to social media can we start living more fulfilling and meaningful lives, without the burden of privacy issues, personal problems and distractions that Facebook creates.

Works Cited:
Facebook. N.p., 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 8 Feb. 2013.
Carlson, Nicolas. "At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded." Business Insider.
            Business Insider, 5 Mar. 2010. Web. 5 Feb. 2013.
A race to the bottom: Privacy ranking of internet service companies—A consultation report.
            (2007, June 9). Privacy International.Retrieved 17 Feb. 2013.

4 comments:

  1. your essay was very informative. I agree people spend way to much of their free time on the computer/facebook following other people's every move. I dont know where they get the time.

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  2. Brooke, you are totally correct when you said "if you walk into a resturant, mostly everyone is using some kind of technical device."... This drives me CRAZY!! I cannot stand to see someone on their phone or checking facebook when they are with their significant others, or family, eating lunch or dinner. Whatever the case is they need to just take a minute and enjoy the ability to have the night to eat out.

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  3. Your bring up some fantastic points, Privacy being the biggest concern or issues. I think that this is a growing problem that people really don't fully understand the gravity of. Not only can it be a detraction but a detriment if not managed correctly. We have to be very aware of what if anything were sharing, for the all the reasons you mentioned. I am sad that were losing that in the moment feel, but maybe after a few years we'll work out the kinks and again have the time for personal engagement, One can wish. Thanks for sharing.

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