Facebook.com began as a social networking site for Harvard college students to share information across the Web. Mark Zuckerberg started it and the concept took off in 2004 . “Thefacebooks.com” later morphed into Facebook.com and the social networking site we have today. The idea spread across colleges all over the world and grew to include various high schools and corporate organizations.

Now anyone can join Facebook. By imposing few rules on its users, and allowing for free page creation, Facebook quickly became one of the most widely used sites on the Internet. It has over 30 million registered users and Facebook says it is adding around tens of thousands of new users a day .

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million.

With this huge install base, you will have hundreds if not thousands of other Facebook users that want to send you a message, post a comment on your Wall, browse through your photo albums, compare class schedules, and who are dying to be listed as your friend. No matter what your hobby or background, Facebook will open up a whole new world of people with the same interest.

In this study, we found out both advantages and disadvantages brought by Facebook and we are going to provide some suggestions to the users.

The interview of Facebook's founder →


The advantages of the use of “Facebook”

To begin with, one must acknowledge the fact that Facebook can enhance and maintain social capital of individuals. One of the dimensions of social capital is assessing one's ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which is called maintained social capital. According to the study conducted by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe in 2007, the study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. Regression analyses conducted on results from a survey of undergraduate students (N = 286) suggest a strong association between use of Facebook and social capital, with the strongest relationship being to bridging social capital. The use of facebook could enhance and maintain social capital because it creates a platform for gathering, sharing own experience with friends. If people with same interest, such as fans of a particular pop-star, they can group together and strengthen their network of human relationship.


Also, the use of Facebook could enhance the mobility of information. Some applications in Facebook such as FunWall, photos uploading, could help people to share photos, videos, written information with a very high speed. Facebook is so convenient and is not time-consuming that there are fewer restrictions on sharing the information due to the user-friendly design of the system. For instance, when people want to upload their photos, what they need to do is to select all their photos from their computers at the same time instead of uploading them one by one. They can also tag their friends after uploading the photos. Once they tag their friends, they will receive an email to inform them. When you look at the album, you may find the others you know and invite them as friends directly. Social network will be extended undoubtedly. Most importantly, Facebook can help people to share a large amount of information within a very short time.

Moreover, the use of Facebook provides different research topics for academic. Due to the popularity of using Facebook, it becomes the hot topic in the field of academic. For instance, Jade Coutts, Kara Dawson, Jeff Boyer, and Richard Ferdig of the University of Florida sought to understand our prospective teachers’ use of Facebook and the implications of these findings for teacher education programs; H. John Heinz of the Carnegie Mellon University looks for underlying demographic or behavioral differences between the communities of the network’s members and non-members, analyze the impact of privacy concerns on members’ behavior and compare members’ stated attitudes with actual behavior, and document the changes in behavior subsequent to privacy-related information exposure. Facebook provides different topics to the scholars for examining human behavior of the network and find out how people can use the network in a better way.


Enabling you to share your photos with your friends ↓




The function of comments leaving ↓




Every thing does have two sides. Using Facebook contains some obvious and implicit disadvantages, namely illegal problems, sexual and violent issue, fake information and poor social relationship.


The disadvantages of the use of Facebook

It is no doubt that using Facebook comes up with illegal problems. There are many cases in which some people’s photos (usually female) uploaded in Facebook are stolen by strangers. This is all about the privacy. Those bad guys may use others’ photos to react someone. Some photos may be edited to contain sex. To make matter worse, they may even do some illegal activities by acting others. For instance, they can hold an event to group a crowd by acting those famous ones like idols. Then, they can commit crime by just asking invitees to come out. It is very dangerous. Crime rate will therefore increased.

Besides, there is a problem about sexual and violent issue. If you just search “sex” in the Facebook search engine, there will be more than five hundreds groups and discussion topics pop-up. Actually, you need to be invited and thus you can join the discussions. Yet, even though you are not invited as a member of those groups, you can still look at those sexual or violent pictures which are very barefaced. Not matter you are an adult or not, you can see them. There is no restriction in those groups. Such photos do poison young people as well as the whole society a lot.

Thirdly, Facebook is flooded with fake information. The word 'Truth' had never been exists. It is hard Sometimes, kidding may not be a big matter. Nevertheless, some people may make use of this chance to spread fake information. You may make wrong decisions because of such fake news. There was a case that a man claimed he was the president of Facebook in January. Also, it affects the sense of responsibility. People are no longer to care what they tell as they no need to bear any bad effects. This phenomenon may also be spread in reality.

Last but not least, using Facebook is actually affecting our social relationship! As people, especially new generation, spend more and more time on Facebook, people neglect to get along with their families. Though there is a pool of older people using this new network, most parents and grandparents still don’t know how to use it. The generation gap between family and teenagers becomes wider that may destroys the development of ethics in the society.

Not only the relationship among family but also will the real-life relationship will also be affected. As the above mentioned, Facebook can help linking up people from different specific groups. However, communication in cyberspace isn’t face to face. It will affect people’s social skills and communication skills. According to an academic research, face-to-face communication is better than communication in virtual life. (Tutty, 2008) It’s because when people get into conversation with others in face-to-face, body language, eye contact and tones used can ensure that people decode proper messages encoded by senders. This can avoid unnecessary misunderstanding which may affect real relationship. Also, those verbal and nonverbal languages can create a friendlier atmosphere and let people feel the sincerity. That is very important.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the emergence of Facebook has its advantages and disadvantages. It helps maintain the users’ social capitals, increase the mobility of information and provide different research topics for academic. On the other hand, using will brings about certain illegal problems, make some negative information like sex and violence easier to access, enable one to use fake information and deteriorate our real-life relationship. To be a smart user of Facebook, we should pay attention to the following when using it. First, we should not easily believe the information shown on Facebook since official never proves it. Once you have suffered from that, Facebook cannot be acknowledged evidence for justifying yourself. Second, you should make good use of the privacy functions provided by Facebook as it can help you choose which friends can have the exclusive rights to see your photos and video clips. Last but not least, we should always bear in mind that Facebook is just one of the ways of communication. In reality, face-to-face communication still acts as an important role to maintain good relationship. As long as we use Facebook in a wise way, it dose bring us a lot of convenience.


References

1. Editors of Bottletree Book LLC, 2007,“Facebook Fanatic: Explode Your Popularity, Secure Your Privacy and Buzz Your Band on Facebook”, Bottletree Books LLC
2. Tutty, Jeremy; Klein, James. Educational Technology Research & Development, Apr2008, Vol. 56 Issue 2, p101-124

News

1. Anonymous, (2008-08-12)“Social Networking Explodes Worldwide as Sites Increase their Focus on Cultural Relevance", ComScore, Retrieved on 2008-08-14.
2. Seward, Zachary M. (2007-07-25). "Judge Expresses Skepticism About Facebook Lawsuit". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 2008-04-30.
3. Techtree News Staff (2008-08-13). "Facebook: Largest, Fastest Growing Social Network",Techtree.com,ITNation. Retrieved on 2008-08-14.

Websites

1. Education and Information Technology Library, Online available: http://www.editlib.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Reader.NoAccess&paper_id=24861 (Retrieved on 03/12/2008)
2. SpringerLink, Online available: http://www.springerlink.com/content/gx00n8nh88252822/ (Retrieved on 03/12/2008)
3. The interview of Facebook's founder, Online available: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1UNrqz6X-AE (Retrieved on 05/12/2008)
4. Wiley InterScience, Online available: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117979349/abstract
   (Retrieved on 03/12/2008)
5. Yahoo! News, Online available:http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/080113/4/6odz.html (Retrieved on 2/12/2008)