A Newspaper Opinion Editorial on the Conformity Towards Facebook, Essay Example

As I walked past the corridors, I could not help noticing that people had become more serious with their work when I saw that everyone had their face glued to the screen of their computer. I believed so for quite a while until I went to check out something I needed from my colleague’s computer and that is when I found her on a webpage with a title ‘Facebook’.

It all seemed like a complicated thing to me and I innocently asked if she could explain to me what it is and how it works. She looked at me with eyes that seemed to ask whether I was from another planet since Facebook had become so popular and is indeed the most used communication site. She spared a few minutes to explain to me what seemed to be an eighth wonder. It did not take me a whole semester to learn about it so I began using it as soon as the lady opened an account for me.

Facebook has become very popular at the workplace because it is accompanied by interesting ways of interesting with each other in the organization. People would rarely talk face to face because they did most of the communication on the net. It was an interesting discovery because we were always writing each other and life at work had become so relaxing and easy because we had more hours of chat than work. Within a short while, the monthly progressive reports started showing a decline in productivity and the manager called for a meeting. A meeting which only had one agenda, Facebook

Face book as a social network sneaked into people’s lives and only a short while later it caught the whole world by storm. The early adapters began to enjoy the interactivity at a time when the network was not very much developed. The slow adapters were however very skeptical at the beginning. But as the level of interactivity provided by it continued to grow, people began to get interested. And everybody caught the fever.

Everybody was convincing their friends to join the network and soon everybody became a member. From the little school going children to the old C.E.O.’s and members of parliament. It became like a virtual café where people meet to share their day. And the level of interaction continues to grow everyday reaching a level where it almost seems too good to be true. Face book is now the place to find anyone you want. From the president of the United States, to the beautiful girl next door and almost any other person you may want to interact with.

As a social network, there is no doubt that face book is in a class of its own, but just what are its effects on the people who use it? A local television channel run a feature a couple of months ago on the negative effects of face book on the working class. This feature highlighted that the level of productivity on the users of face book has dropped by almost half. The truth is people who use face book log on to their accounts first thing when they get into the office. Minutes that should be spent organizing desks for the day are spent checking on who commented on whose status.

Companies are as a result suffering and this has led many to block face book form the office computers. But when users can access face book from their mobile phones this does not really help. This is because workers seem to keep diverting from their duties during the day to check on their profiles.

The level of addictiveness of face book has also affected the performance of many students.
During lecturers students tend to multitask by trying to listen o their lecturers and update their profiles from their phones at the same time.

The amount of personal information made available to the rest of the world by face book has also been a contentious issue. This has caused many human rights activists especially in the United States to push for face book bans.  These questions about how secure personal information is on face book have led the owners of face book to adjust their security measures but this is still not perfect. The moment someone signs up for face book, anyone who searches for them on Google can find them and see the information that they have entered on face book. Though this risk has been reduced by making one’s information available to only friends, the dangers of it have not been lowered completely.

This is because some people open face book accounts using pseudo-names or the names of other people and this gives them access to the accounts of unsuspecting victims. This is so dangerous especially when a person want access to another’s information for malicious reasons. For example, there have also been cases where a lady has found her pictures posted in an advertisement for a pornographic website. In such a case one has no idea whom to blame or who carries the legal liabilities because any of their face book friends can download pictures from their profile without any problems.

Many people (especially celebrities whose pictures are easily available) have had problems when they learnt that an account in their name and with their picture was being run by somebody without their consent. This is especially when such accounts are used to post rude profanities on face book causing a negative impact on the victims image.

The issue of extra marital relationships cannot be ignored. The amount of privacy provided by in-box on face book has seen may marriages almost end because of the intimate relationships that have developed through it.

Since one cannot control who writes on their wall, many people have used face book to embarrass others by posting personal secrets on their walls. This is especially in cases where stalkers pose as friends only to surprise you by posting embarrassing messages on your profile. Such situations can also be difficult to control as such stalkers only change their names and it can be hard to track them and remove them from your friend list.

There are however some advantages provided by face book. For example people get to network with other business people and exchange ideas using the network. However the amount of information available about a person plays out as a disadvantage as it can become too distributing when dealing with a person. This is because it can affect a professional relationship between two people

The level of interactivity is also an advantage; this is because people can chat with each other real time as opposed to email and short message service.  However, the fact that a person can chat with very many people at a time can cause errors especially in cases where a person has sent information to the wrong person.

My word of advice is that the users of Facebook use it carefully. It would also help if the owners of the network adjusted the security issues sot hat they can make it a little more private. They can also devise language monitors so that people avoid using profanities in a network that is also available to children.