Facebook: Its Impact on Us and our Society

Today, my mother was complaining that I spent a lot of time on Facebook, that it was becoming like an addiction to check it several times every day...

As we all know, Facebook is a social networking website where you can add friends, message them, chat, join groups, play, etc.. It started out as a social network for Harvard students, then it started growing until everyone was able to join. After doing a little research I found that today, Facebook has more than 350 million users worldwide, more than 100 million acces to it daily, more than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on it daily, more than 1 billion pieces of information are shared weekly. Facebook is being part of our daily lives, like an addiction, I mean even our parents and teachers have a Facebook account, we can even check it on our celphones now! .. If Facebook was a country, it would be the sixth most populated in the world. It is just a medium of communication , but yet, it is so much more than that; with the simple click of the mouse, we can see what gender a facebooker is, to what religion they believe in, where do they live, what they like and dislike, what school they attend, who are their family , their sentimental situation, oh well! a lot of things more!

Recently, it has even been used on buisness and political purposes. For instance, Facebook teamed up with ABC to let facebook users take part in the debate of the 5th of January in 2008, they could give their opinions about the topics, vote, and message questions.

Workers, students and simply everyone spend hours in facebook doing absolutely nothing, going from home to profile and back. In some countries, like China, Iran, Vietnam and Syria, have banned facebook to prevent that this waste of time". A lot of people are really dependent on facebook, they are using it 24/7 .

Also, now there is no privacy. The other day I was talking with a friend, I asked her if she knew about the snowing at Cananea. She told me that she did not hear about it, but knew until she saw the photos that were uploaded in facebook. Everyone knows what you are doing, and knows simply everything about it!

.. the funny thing is , that my mother uses facebook as much as I do :)