Facebook, a Tool for Connection?

     As the research pointed out, numerous Internet users are captured by the attraction of Facebook, a prevalent social website. Since its initiation in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has become the most welcomed social networking site, with over 500 million members in 2010. From connecting people across the globe to giving users an opportunity to polish their networking skills, Facebook offers it all. What’s more, it has become a great platform for raising social issues and also a profitable advertising tool with a broader reach than any other media. Nowadays, many youths are addicted to it, and I, unfortunately, am no exception because I browse through it at least three hours per day. Addicted as I am, I still have a say on this website’s merit and flipside.

      The cream of Facebook must be its feature to cultivate intimacy with friends, especially with those in “weak relationship.” By “weak relationship,” I mean it describes the friendship with nodding acquaintance like classmates in elementary school as well as in kindergarten, or ex-colleagues in previous workplace. By adding them in our Facebook, these friends in “weak relationship” can keep in touch with us anew. Thanks to Facebook, it creates and builds up a strong intimacy between people. Nevertheless, this kind of intimacy is not a real one but an outcome of virtual interaction. Adding more on this news, Facebook adversely affects the social communication skills of the youths. It spoils the value of long distance relationships, because the relationship is built and maintained through a website with lacks of emotional and physical involvement. Though the friend list in the networking site keeps mounting, how many of members are our real friend is a question worthy of pondering. Remember, friendship is more than just knowing a person over the internet.

     Obviously, privacy is the shortcoming discussed most. Seldom do users realize that Facebook serve a function named Open Graph API. The power of the Open Graph API is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken. It can record every website, link we visit frequently by setting countless “like” buttons in most of the websites. For instance, if we love a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if we visit a concert site, the site can tell us when our favorite band is coming to our area. In the other term, some criminal rings are able to go through our pockets by setting similar fishing sites. What’s worse, there is always the fear of cyber stalking in Facebook, and chances are that our personal details and photos might land up in wrong hands. To me, the problem on privacy relates to a film I have watched before, The Truman Show, starred by Jim Carrey. In this film, not until ages to thirty year old, does the main character Truman aware of living in a constructed reality television show, broadcast 24-hours-a-day to billions of people across the globe. Similar condition as Facebook does, it forces us to live in the age without privacy. 

      These qualities and features of Facebook is a double edged sword. We have to give a second thought on using it because it is the event happened right in front of us. Even as a Facebook member, there is no compulsion to share information every single day, or addicted to it like criminal inhaling drug. As a one-click culture, Facebook is synonymous with the Internet. They all can be beneficial or disruptive, only depend on us.