TECH EDUCATION

Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook Essay

By Philip Yiga | February 19, 2017

Facebook is one of the largest social-networks today and billions of people use this social-network daily. In fact, facebook has become very popular today because it helped to make communication very easy around the world by cutting-down physical-boundaries and facebook even offers a lot of personal and business benefits. On the other hand, facebook has experienced a dramatic growth in past few years whereby it’s accessed by a billion users on daily-basis. On top of that, facebook is free of charge and this implies that you can easily create an account on this social-network as long as you gain access to the internet and this is actually one of the reasons leading to its gradual growth today. lastly, people can upload photos, videos and even chat over facebook without any charges and this has helped to connect different people from different places around the world in real-time.

Advantages of Facebook:

It has connected the world: since facebook is a global social-network, it has helped to connect people in various parts of the world and this has actually helped to improve on the way people communicate today. In fact, with facebook people don’t have to pay any money inorder to connect with their loved-ones and friends all over the world.

Improved communication with friends and family: with facebook, you can easily connect with your family, friends, work-colleagues and even get a chance to find new people in different locations around the world. In fact, on facebook you will be able to meet various people sharing the same interests like you and this is a great thing.

It helps to connect people with different cultures and languages: facebook has a translation-feature which enables the user to connect with other facebook-users from different countries who speak different languages. This implies that different people all-over the world will be able to communicate and understand themselves while using facebook.

It can be used for dating purposes: facebook is also known for helping people find their dates and this is mainly because this social-network is powered by over 1-billion active users and this actually makes it easier for someone to find a date that shares common interests or hobbies with him/her. However, when looking for a date on facebook you need to be careful about fake facebook-profiles which are usually created by spammers or stalkers.

Facebook helps to improve on business performance: since facebook connects different people around the world, businesses can easily identify certain user tastes or products-preferences and then promote such products/services on facebook while targeting a particular audience. This will actually increase on the possibilities of businesses making more money online than never before thus leading to their development in the long-run. Additionally, facebook will also allow for establishment of partnerships between various businesses no matter their location this actually helps to increase on the brand-value and social-media presence of such businesses in the long-run. All in all, facebook will help you find new business ideas and clients if used in proper way.

It offers video-chatting services: facebook also features a video-chatting tool that helps people to communicate using live video-chats. In fact, facebook implemented facebook video-chat feature in collaboration with Skype and this has actually enabled different people around the world to make video-calls in real-time and at a free-charge thus leading to an improvement in the way people communicate today.

Facebook provides image and video hosting services: facebook can actually be used as a site for hosting images and videos whereby this enables people to share different content on their timelines. In fact, with facebook the user can set privacy-levels inorder to control who can or can’t see what they are sharing online. Additionally, you can also download and store your facebook photos and videos using the facebook backup-account feature.

It provides users with news and updated-information: since facebook is a real-time social-network site, it’s always fed with updated data like the latest news and other information. In fact, important news-highlights usually go viral on facebook and there are even some news-companies today that use facebook to provide people with news-updates every hour. Additionally, some companies and brands are using facebook to announce their new products, services and this has led to the development of different companies globally.

Quick and easy sharing of information: facebook actually allows you to share information with different people like friends, family or public by simply posting on your wall. In fact, you can share information like pictures, videos and a lot more but the good thing about facebook is that you can control the number of people you want to view the posted information and vice-versa.

Offers different chatting services: facebook actually offers users with different chatting-services which include text, audio and video chatting. In fact, this implies that you will be able to choose a chatting-service that best suits your interests and those of your friends or family-members. Additionally, many students today use facebook chatting-services to carryout group-discussions while some businesses use these services for short-meetings outside office-premises.

It provides a mobile-facebook app: facebook actually provides its users with a mobile-app which enables them to conveniently access facebook without having to use a desktop-computer. In fact, with the facebook mobile-app you can chat, update your profile/status, comment and do a lot more conveniently and faster than when using a computer.

Helps you find old-friends: today, most people have an account on facebook and this implies that you can easily find old-friends and workmates on facebook by simply searching for their names in facebook’s search-engine. On top of that, the facebook friend-finder feature will allow you to find your old-friends by simply typing in their names of email-addresses. This is actually very important especially if you had lost contact of an old-friend and you would really love to connect with them online again. In fact, many people today have actually found their old-friends through facebook that they thought they would never contact again.

It can be used for business-promotions: you can actually promote or advertise your business through the facebook-Ads and Fans page. In fact, facebook provides a customizable Ads-placement service which allows businesses to target people of specific age, interests, and geographical-location inorder to provide them with relevant product/service adverts. All in all, the facebook-Ads are very easy to use and cost-effective than Google-Ads.

It provides entertainment to its users: facebook actually provides its users with a lot of entertainment services like games and other applications. in fact, there are people who go to facebook to play games, videos and there are actually a lot of facebook-apps that help to keep you entertained when feeling bored like; photo-editors, horoscope-apps and a lot more. This actually makes facebook a boredom-killer most especially for students during their vacations.

It’s free of charge: from the beginning, facebook provided free-services to its users and that’s why it expanded at a higher-rate than most social-networks. In fact, you don’t have to pay any money to join facebook or to keep your facebook-account activated and this has actually enabled even the less-privileged individuals to communicate conveniently with their friends and family all-over the world. However, facebook also has some paid-services like Facebook Ads-placement services but these only apply to businesses or people who wish to market their products/services on facebook.

It’s very easy to use (user-friendly): since facebook features a great design, it’s very easy to use by even novice-users. Additionally most people spend a lot of time on facebook because it’s user-friendly and it even helps to keep them busy/active during their free-time. However facebook can be addictive and that’s why it’s recommended to control yourself when using this social-network inorder to become more productive during work or school hours.

It can be used to login into other websites: today, most websites allow users to login into their systems using facebook Login-ID. This actually saves users a lot of time that they would have wasted registering inorder to gain access to other websites. In fact, facebook syncs with your email-account and this implies that it will provide other websites with all the information they need about you.

It enables you to turn on/off the online chatting status: facebook actually enables you to turn on/off your online-status and this actually gives you the flexibility to go public at your own will. This feature is actually very important especially if you don’t want someone to know that you’re available on facebook during your free-hours.

It provides people with jobs: facebook is actually a big company that provides different people with jobs like programmers, system-administrators and a lot more whereby this has led to an improvement in the standards-of-living by such individuals. Additionally, some companies recruit new-employees through facebook-advertisements and this has actually helped different people to get jobs without even spending a lot of money or time searching for jobs.

It’s very secure: facebook is actually very secure to use because its features great privacy-settings that allow you to choose the desired level of privacy. in fact, with facebook you can decide on the people you want to see your posts, you can turn on/off your chat, block unwanted people and even do a lot of things as long as your logged into your account.

It can be use to transmit documents: facebook actually offers email-services like transmission of documents and other content. In fact, you can send or receive documents conveniently on facebook and this implies that you don’t have to log into your email-account to send or receive documents like in the past thus leading to an improvement in communication.

Disadvantages of facebook:

Facebook is addictive: facebook is a useful and helpful communication-tool but it can actually become harmful to the user if she/he spends a lot of valuable-time on this social-network. In fact, facebook chatting has become a dangerous habit amongst young-people and this has actually led to the production of less-productive people at work-places and schools.

It has a lot of Fake profiles and ID’s: it’s actually very simple to create a fake-profile on facebook and bad-people usually use fake-profiles to manipulate, insult and harass other people using facebook. Additionally, people in dangerous businesses like drug-trafficking and human-trafficking uses fake-profile to communicate with associates easily while on facebook and this has actually led to an increase in crimes around the world.

It has accelerated relationship break-ups: facebook has actually become one of the major causes of failed relationships and breakups today because most couples tend to spy on each other over facebook and this can be dangerous. Additionally, if one person in the couple spends a lot of time on facebook and gives the other person less time, then their relationship is more likely to fail due to lack of time to actively engage in a relationship together as a couple.

It leads to reduced employee performance at the workplace: in companies that allow employees to access the internet, there has been a reduction in employee-performance because some employees tend to spend a lot of work-time on facebook and this actually affects the company’s productivity-levels in the long-run. So, some companies have decided to put in place rules that guide employees on the use social-networks during working-hours.

Reduced concentration and performance of students at school: schools that allow students to go with cell-phones or other computerized-devices are actually facing a decline in the concentration-levels of student while in the classroom. This has actually affected the student’s performance in the long-run and that’s why some schools are now banning the use of cell-phones by student’s inorder to improve on their performance at school.

It has privacy-issues: although facebook tends to be secure, it’s not entirely safe to use whereby unknown people can easily track your activities on facebook and then use such information to do bad things to you like; harassment, identity-theft, conning and a lot more. So, you need to be very careful about what you share on facebook and try to keep certain things private to people that are not your friends on facebook or your privacy will be compromised.

Account-intrusion: facebook has been experiencing vulnerable attacks ever since it started operating. In fact, hackers have been actively accessing facebook-accounts of different user’s in order to alter their profiles, posted-information and lot more. For example, many facebook-users have ever experienced a change in their profile-information or even received porn-content on their wall while logged out of facebook. This has actually embarrassed several people using facebook and it even makes it insecure to use at a certain point.

It’s a time-waster: the biggest disadvantage of using facebook is that it wastes a lot of your productive-time and it has actually made different people unproductive while at work or school. In fact, some people spend most of their time commenting, viewing updates, playing games and doing other unproductive activities on facebook. Although some people know the drawbacks of using facebook, they can’t stop over-using it because it’s addictive and this is very bad. Lastly, due to over-usage of facebook some people have been disconnected from real-life or social-life.

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