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.
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.
ReplyDeleteBrooke, 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.
ReplyDeleteComments noted.
ReplyDeleteYour 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.
ReplyDelete