Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world and it currently boasts of having 2.19 billion active monthly users and that’s a large number to wrap your mind around, isn’t it? While Facebook does come with a lot of interesting features that you can use to communicate what you are doing at the moment and even share your location with your friends, the problem though is that this platform can misuse its member data and even hock it with third parties. The Facebook – Cambridge analytica was but the perfect example of the same. With more than half of India on Facebook, it was only a matter of time when someone started to leverage the information shared by a user to target him and his friends specifically and try to influence their thoughts. That’s exactly what happened with Cambridge analytica as the Congress party hired it to steal data from Indian users and to utilize the same to influence elections. As you can see, Facebook does seem to come with more than a few issues and some of it is bound to leave you at a loss for words. So let’s take a closer look at the positive and negative effects of Facebook.
Positive impact of Facebook:
- Family: Facebook is one of the few social media platforms that enable you to keep in close contact with your entire family. You can let them know when you are traveling from one place to another and whether you are traveling by flight or train or even a ship. You can share daily updates with your family and even call them when they are online at the same time. Essentially, this platform enables you to keep in touch with your family, no matter how many miles you are separated from each other.
- Meet new people: With Facebook planning to get into the dating game, this platform is the perfect way to meet new people based on the common interests you share. At the moment, you cannot do much other than just send a contact request and when they respond, you can respond right away and start chatting. The dating portal is still in development and it will be awhile before you can use it. But for the moment, if you were looking for ways to make new friends, then this is the platform to log into.
- Expressions: with advanced features being added you have myriad ways to express your inner self on Facebook. You can take a video and post it online or edit it and work in several new filters before you post it online. Just check out Facebook and you will see what It’s all about.
Negative impact of Facebook:
- Privacy: Given the recent Cambridge analytica episode, it was but natural for a lot of users to be concerned about the privacy settings on their account. And of course, no one liked the idea of having all their info being sold to third parties. But the good news, if you can call it that, is that the Cambridge analytica is a one-off episode or so Facebook would have us believe. At the moment, Facebook has not instituted any additional security protocols and it remains to be seen if similar security issues will not take place in the future.
- Often, your Facebook can prove to be quite distracting, this can be downright irritating especially when you are working on something important.
- Cyberbullying: Facebook, of late, is also becoming a hotbed for cyber-bullying where a recent episode led to a suicide attempt by one user. Facebook banned both users later on but it just goes on to show you that there’s little control over what is posted live at the moment.
These are some of the positive and negative effects of social media marketing giant, Facebook. While Facebook is a useful platform to use to try and connect with others, it is also a bit redundant as it seems to have several security flaws. On the whole, it is a great platform to use and one hopes that Facebook will take effective measures to both protect and uphold the privacy of their members.
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