As do all social networking sites, facebook allows individuals to make new friends and relationships. It also gives users the ability to re-unite with old friends and maintain connections with them. I find it useful how you can look at the profiles of students who are taking the same class as you, or even living in the same area. All of this can be done by a simple click of the mouse. It is certainly easier to communicate with others and it is a lot less awkward when communicating with people you’re not familiar with.There are more than 70 languages available to choose from, which increases the worldwide popularity of the site. You can have conversations with other online friends using ‘facebook chat’ and you can send links and photos to your friends. By now there is even a facebook mobile application which is available on nearly every phone that is currently sold. What more does a social networking site possibly need?
One of the main reasons I use facebook is to contact the rest of my rugby team. I’ve created a group on facebook which includes all the players of Bangor U16’s rugby team. My dad is the manager of the team so if there is an upcoming match of if a training is due to be cancelled, I can simply post the news to all of the members at once. When my older brothers were playing the manager had to phone each player individually which was very time consuming and cost money. Another handy device facebook offers is the birthday reminder. It gives me the ability to see the birthdays of every single person on my friends list. It even reminds me when someone’s birthday is imminent. I feel very embarrassed to admit that this is an useful tool because I should know my friends’ birthdays.
Facebook is remarkably easy to use. The interface is surprisingly simple and you don’t need to be an expert in programming to use it. Although this is a positive aspect about the site, there is one flaw. The minimum age to create a profile on facebook is thirteen, and since it is so easy to use the website, surely someone under thirteen years old could create an account. All they have to do is add a few years to their date of birth and facebook wouldn’t have a clue. Not only is it easy for people to lie about their age, but they can easily lie about their personality, or even their identity. People can say anything about themselves and facebook couldn’t do anything about it. There’s no-one to check if the information is correct. It’s also possible to create a fictional person on facebook which makes it impossible to trace back who the person is – this is very disturbing! If it’s easy for underage users to create their own profile, then it is just as easy for a sexual predator to create his own profile. This is one of facebook’s unsolved problems, not only is facebook unaware of sexual predators, but the actual users of the site aren’t aware of the possible threats. A large number of young and naïve users don’t take notice of the privacy settings, so their profiles are automatically set as ‘default settings’ which basically means that their profiles are open for anyone to see. Too many users are unaware of these hidden dangers. The users are not to blame, surely facebook should customize the privacy settings of each individual so that someone would need to amend them in order to allow everyone to see their details rather than the other way around.
I believe that facebook is very beneficial to the modern age and there are many advantages to using it, but although it is exceedingly useful, I still think that the world would be a better place if facebook had never existed. I say this, not only because of the possible threats and dangers, but because of the biggest problem of all; Facebook addiction. This is the reason why I think facebook shouldn’t exist, because people are on it 24/7. It is not natural for people to be on a social networking site for so long, it is a total waste of time. Work places have banned the site due to the fact that it interferes with work. It also interferes with school work, statistics say that a student’s grades would be higher if it were not for facebook. I admit that I was addicted to facebook, which is the reason why I believe facebook addiction is such a major problem. I noticed how much time I spent on the site and realised that I had to do something about it. I didn’t go to such extent as to delete my profile, but I did come up with an idea. I asked my mum to change my password, this way I wouldn’t be able to log on, and the only person who could would be my mum, and then I could only log on when absolutely necessary. My problem was solved, I couldn’t believe how much time I wasted in front of the computer, or how many times I logged on in a single day on my ipod. I would advise everyone who has the same problem to do the same thing. Although I didn’t have the power to get rid of facebook’s existence, I was no longer hooked to it.
