Facebook

Facebook; the social utility that helps you connect and share with the people in your life … true of false?

Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerburg as a social networking for University of Harvard students, on February 4th 2004. Over time, the website has expanded its membership to all university students, then high school students, and has now currently enabled anyone aged 13 and over to attain a membership. Taking off at an astonishing rate, Facebook’s membership is currently at 120 million.

Controversies seem to be magnetic to this newly developed social networking site. What began as a medium for users to connect with each other, has become a spiral of controversy and law suits. These issues have arisen, through unclear positions on copyrights from embedded materials of users to spam advertisements. Facebook has also been known to be the reason for not getting a job acceptance because of unruly behaviour cited and shown on the website. There are other countless stories that have arisen from this social networking site to have a negative outcome.

Although Facebook has encountered many difficulties as one would from a public social networking site, there have been many positive outcomes. For example, people have been able to create or join groups that are tailored to their interests, which inevitably creates online friendships. This site also allows users to easily share photos, videos, literature and a very wide range of subjects that would be hard to share otherwise. Facebook has proven itself in many respects to be a useful social networking utility.

The question comes though; is Facebook truly a social utility that helps you connect and share with the people in your life? True. Facebook has proven to be a positive to a social life of someone. It is easy-to-use and easy-to-access website that empowers users to access all members who have signed up. It also gives users the power to create groups and post almost anything they want. This networking site also helps users to contact those who are extreme lengths apart. They can contact those who are very far in a matter of seconds, and it won’t cost a cent; eliminating the cost of long distance phone charges. Thus bringing everyone a little bit closer.

Facebook can also be used as a tool to promote and project the general publics opinion. Facebook has already been and will continue to be the housing for many protests and petitions. Facebook groups are easy to create and easy to pass by word of mouth. Many protests that have been created on Facebook have reached member numbers in the hundreds, to the hundreds of thousands. Some of these groups have been able to create change and others have not, although all of them have in-fact been able to serve the most beauteous purpose; uniting many people for one idea of change.

Facebook groups also have the power to enable the promotion of human rights and human equality. These groups, and their powers, as many have demonstrated, show that if people on Facebook can unite to make a change on certain topics, it can be done on other topics as well. Facebook groups have been based on raising awareness and money for HIV/AIDS victims, as well as cancer patients. Many other positive and beneficial groups to the community and the world have arisen through Facebook networking.

Facebook has been seen as a negative impact to our generation for its time consumption and productivity obstacle, but through human ingenuity and human kindness, we can easily see the positive outcomes of such a popular and influential social networking site.