Facebook is 5 years old
By Alexander 35 Comments
So Facebook has been going for five years and as of now it is something that I use pretty much every day. There are a great deal of bonuses to being on Facebook, namely staying in touch with people you otherwise would not have, arranging events easily (and freely without paying for phonecalls), viewing people's photos and uploading your own, instant messaging... plenty of other things.
Facebook only makes sense if everyone you know is using it. And here in the UK, if you are my age, 21, then the chances are most people you meet socially will have a Facebook. Of course the site originated in the US and I was amazed to see how it came over and blew Myspace out of the water. Interestingly Facebook has yet to penetrate Europe the way it has here.
So with everyone you know on Facebook, it's very hard to not be on Facebook because it becomes so central to everyone's social activity, to not be on Facebook is to be socially disconnected from everyone else.
And that's what the site is about, connecting people. At the same time there are some things about Facebook that I view as negative....
I don't want to be in contact with everyone every minute. You meet up with a friend after not seeing them for two weeks and where before they would have told you about their week, now you probably know all about it anyway.... because it came up in your Facebook feed.
I don't like the fact that someone can upload a photo of me and tag me in that photo without any kind of approval on my part. As soon as that is done, it is in the public domain and if the image depicts me smoking crack (not that I smoke crack) I'm not going to want that up there.
FACEBOOK IS TIME CONSUMING
And off of that, time spent on Facebook could be time you would have otherwise spent with people FOR REAL. Or it may have been time you should have used cleaning your room, doing that project that's due etc.
The amount of personal information Facebook has on us is frightening, if you ever looked more closely at the ads plastered over the right panel, you'll notice that they are clearly targeted at you and your interests. Some would say that's a good thing, but personally I find it uncomfortable that Facebook is essentially selling my "personal" information. But then I guess if you put the information on Facebook, you are essentially giving up your privacy with regard to that information.
I don't want to stay in touch with everyone. I saw a girl not so long ago and after I didn't really want to see her again, she asked me if I had Facebook and I just had to lie. Because Facebook is personal and there are people out there you do not want to have see your profile. Example: Your mum. So you have this contradiction whereby you are giving up your privacy with personal information on one hand, and in the other you want to retain it in certain cases.
But for the most part we are Facebook's willing victims, it is up to us to sign up, up to us what information we upload to the site and up to us if we want to leave. But I will keep using Facebook despite my reservations and mostly, I'll be enjoying it.