The Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook

            With more than 500 million users on Facebook it is important to know both the good and bad things that can come out of having an account.  But since the website has been around for so long and has so many users its easy to find examples of how it has done positive things and also negative things.

Positives:

·      Connecting with friends and family

A study in 2011 by IBM showed that around 70% of people who use Facebook use it primarily to connect with their friends and family (Solis, “People Use Social Networks to Connect with Friends and Family, Sometimes Brands”). Facebook provides people with a way to speak to old friends you otherwise might have forgotten about, or to keep up to date with those who live far away.  Studies have also shown that around 40% of teens even want their grandparents to have a Facebook so that they can stay connected with them (Meredith, Teens Get Grandparents on Facebook for Family Bonding).

·      Making New Friends

Many people using Facebook end up making new friends with people they have never met before and even sometimes a new lover.  There are many stories of people starting relationships due to Facebook like the one Kristin and Matt.  They both met through a mutual friend they had on the website while Matt was stationed in Iraq.  As soon as he got back from his tour the two got engaged (Caroline, The Ten Most Romantic Facebook Love Stories).

Negatives:

           

·      Cyber-Bullying

There are countless stories of kids being bullied online mostly through Facebook.  One story comes out of Ontario about a kid named David Knight. People created an entire Facebook page so that with the intention of making fun of David.  People would call him gay and a pedophile, and also send him emails taunting him.  Luckily David did not physically harm himself like many other kids have, but none the less his situation is still quite awful (Real Life Examples of Cyber-Bullying).  Statistics show that around 33% of all youth have experienced some sort of cyber-bullying and that girls are twice as likely to get cyber-bullied than boys (Statistics – Cease-Cyber Bullying).

·      A Distraction

It seems that many people can so easily get lost on Facebook.  Most people are devoting so much of their time to Facebook and other social networking sites that the amount of time people spend focusing on other things is getting smaller and smaller.  Facebook is often considered the easiest of social networking sites to really spend a lot of time on mostly because there is just so much to be done on it. A study done in 2011 showed that 9 out of 10 college students check Facebook once an hour (Paton, Social Media Networks and Distracting Students). This includes the time when these students are in class.  So Facebook is taking away time from being able to pay attention to lectures and working on their homework later.

            Personally I think that Facebook isn’t necessarily the best social networking site the Internet has to offer.  The positives above are both great things but they can also easily be done on other sites that attract less of the negatives.  Websites like Twitter also offer a better format for the news and more important things while you can still connect with all of your friends and family.  I have also seen a lot less cyber-bullying on Twitter compared to Facebook.  I think that people should be free to use the websites they want to use, but to me, the negatives outweigh the positives when it comes to Facebook and feel that there are better alternatives out there.