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Modern communication has radically changed over the last 50 years, from sending each other letters, simple telephone calls or even meeting face to face and talking over a cup of coffee. As the human race grows we have learned to adapt and create new methods of communication.
One example of this is Facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg. Founded in February 2004 by 19 year old Mark Zuckerberg while studying in Harvard University, the site started simply as “The Facebook” and it became an instant hit on Harvard campus with nearly a thousand visitors within the first 24 hours. This would not be the end of “The Facebook” however as the site continued to grow and evolve as a social networking site for colleges across the United States and eventually the entire planet.
Now, 6 years later, the site has become one of the biggest and most successful web sites in the world, garnering over 500 million users a month. Facebook today allows us to connect with friends and family at the click of a button, Not only can we connect with friends and family but the site allows us to upload pictures publically or privately, write life updates, share interests, or even just play video games such as FarmVille.
Unfortunately a controversy arose a week after Zuckerberg launched the site in 2004 where three other Harvard students accused him of stealing the idea of Facebook. As the site grew, these accusations eventually grew into a fully fledged lawsuit by the three Harvard seniors threatening Zuckerberg for theft and fraud of his idea of the site. This started a legal dispute which still continues to this day.
The main dispute around the creation of Facebook started when Zuckerberg agreed to help those three Harvard seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and another student named Divya Narendra with an idea for a dating site for students exclusively enrolled in Harvard University. This website idea was named “The Harvard Connection” and was essentially Match.com for Harvard students. But instead of creating this site for them Zuckerberg stalled them while he created his own website which we know today as Facebook.
This dispute even created a film based upon the events of Facebooks creation and the controversy that followed. The film titled “The Social Network” was a critical success making 225 million euros in the box office and a subsequent rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 95% on Metacritic. One of the many benefits that Facebook includes is efficient communication, we are now able to share our thoughts and ideas to people anywhere on the globe in an instant, It can help people who have difficulty having conversations with other people, like the socially awkward or people who suffer from anxiety.
There are many features on Facebook that can improve bonds and relationships between people through tagging and sharing and private messaging. Facebook also has great potential for maintaining long-distance relationships for people who may have moved away from home. Family members can get closer to their elderly relatives and it can possibly be a way to reduce loneliness in older people.
Although there are many major positives to social media, there is much potential for negative interactions to occur online. One of the most negative aspects to Facebook is its addicting nature. Many people were and are addicted to Facebook, using it for 3-5 hours a day. This is especially prevalent to teenagers who usually have plenty of free time during the school day or even the summer holidays. Negative behavior such as this needs to be supervised and controlled if social media websites like Facebook are going to be used by today’s youths.
This has major potential for negative effects on relationships in families and can possibly make people anti-social. Abuse and cyber bullying can also occur and can have devastating effects on younger people if it is not supervised and controlled. One such example of this was a young woman named Amanda Todd who committed suicide in 2012 because of the constant abuse she received in school and online. It is far easier to verbally abuse someone behind the safety of a phone or computer screen than it is to do it face-to-face. That is what makes cyber bullying so deadly because of its ease of access.
In Conclusion, I believe Facebook is here to stay and technology will only continue to grow and evolve as we enter the next decade. Everyone needs genuine friendships in the real world and websites like Facebook can help keep them safe and healthy but we need to remember that Facebook is not a replacement for friendships. We need to stay aware on how to use websites like Facebook in a healthy manner and keep its effect positive.
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