Facebook: Social Network or Social Disaster

Facebook: Social Network or Social Disaster Your busy day is done. You head home open up your laptop or head over to your desktop and turn it on. After impatiently waiting for everything to load on your computer you open up your web browser. You go to the top of the page and type in www.face and arrow down in the drop box to http://www.facebook.com/. As the website loads you wait in anticipation. When the blue bar at the top of the page loads you immediately look to the left hand corner of that bar. You glance over the first icon which is a silhouette of two people. Any friend requests? You then skim over to the next icon, a picture of two message bubbles. They remind you of the ones you would see in a cartoon. Any messages? You then proceed to direct your eyes over to the last icon, the world icon. Any Notifications? You click on these icons and with that click you begin a social interaction with someone. For many people, what I described above is an action they do everyday. “Over 500 million people worldwide live their lives on Facebook.” (Fletcher and Ford, 32) After reading this quote I asked myself one question, “Is it the communication aspect of facebook that causes everyone to be addicted to facebook or is there more to this addiction?” I know I go on Facebook almost everyday without fail but why? Do I go on to communicate and use Facebook as a social network or do I go on it mainly to get the dirt on others and what is going on in their lives? I came to the conclusion that Facebook is definitely a good place to keep in communication with people, however, in many ways, Facebook has definitely been misused and become gossip central. When you think about Facebook what is the first thing that comes to your mind? The first thing for me is friends. Right now I have 933 friends on Facebook and friends are a very important part of everyone’s lives. Facebook, like any other social network, gives you the ability to communicate with friends, coworkers, family