Did you know that Facebook is the most used social networking site in the world? As of January of 2011, the were 600 million users worldwide. That is more than the population of North America and Russia combined! We must say, our world is obsessed with Facebook! 57% people talk more online than they do in real life! 750 MILLION photos were uploaded to Facebook over New Year’s weekend! 70% of businesses use Facebook for marketing! 48% of young Americans said they find out about news through Facebook! Facebook has become a part of our lives without us realizing how it affects our daily lives. Just look at the statistics.
Facebook was founded in February of 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg and his college roommates. Before anyone, aged thirteen and older could become a Facebook member, Zuckerburg limited memberships to students at Harvard which was later expanded to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. Now, seven years later, there are over 600 million Facebook users worldwide.
What can users do with a Facebook account? Users can customize their profiles with photos, personal interests, contact information, etc. Users can also communicate with friends and family all over the world through messages, chat, wall (friends post messages on the user’s profile page for the user to see, and their status (users inform their friends of what they did, where they went, etc) without having to pay the price of a phone call. Facebook also has privacy settings for users to select who should be able to see the information they have put on the website. Examples of settings you can choose from are: everyone, friends, or friends of friends.
Although there are positive things about Facebook, there are also negative things about Facebook. When you are talking to your friends on Facebook, you hope it is your friends that you are talking to but you can’t really be sure. It could be someone who says they are someone you know, but really they could be a stranger from half-way across the world. Also, Facebook is an easy source to cyber-bully. It is really easy to talk trash about another person on Facebook without the other person seeing. Communication sometimes loses its effectiveness when you Facebook your friends using words like “g2g, btw, brb, etc”. When you talk face to face, the person you’re talking to can read your expression, hear the tone of your voice, and read your body language.
Think about these two questions: how big a role does Facebook play in our lives? What would we do without it?
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