This might seem like it is obvious already
but Facebook does allow you to communicate with real people in virtually
real time. Many people, however, don't realize that it's real
consequences to what they post on Facebook and also that real
relationships affect online ones.
There's a ton of people on
Facebook these days - over 800 million active users. With the privacy
options on Facebook, some might actually think that they have total
control over who sees their posts on any given day. This is simply not
the truth. What happens when you make a "drunken" post on FB where you
post a picture of yourself half naked with a ridiculous sombrero on your
head or you make some idiotic statement where you are using profanity
on a close relative. You think to yourself the next morning that it's
not that bad because you are only set to share your posts and
information with a small circle of FB friends. There's one problem:
your friends have friends and those friends have friends and so on.
Because of the way FB is structured, information is indirectly passed
around constantly whether someone in your FB friend circle volunteers it
or not. It's pretty easy to see how a post deemed as harmless can go
just about viral. Assuming they have FB accounts, you are more than
likely indirectly connected to your parents, your college professors,
your church pastor, and even potential employers. So that random rant
you went on where you called one of your FB friends everything except a
child of God, your church pastor might have seen that. That isn't too
say that you should totally censor yourself but you have to post things
as though a huge crowd can hear and/or see what you are doing and you
have to be comfortable with that.
Then there's the people who think that they can be friends with anyone
on Facebook. If we aren't/weren't friends in the real world, what makes
you think I want to be friends online? I have personally received FB
friend requests from people who were mean or ill-willed toward me when
I've encountered them and I know of real life friends of mine who have
also received such awkward friend requests. Why in the word would
anyone want to be your friend on FB if you are are/were one of the
person's worst enemies and there were no attempts made at
reconciliation? The only reason why I see someone would even do this is
to pry into the life of someone else by viewing Facebook posts. They
know that they could not just call the person up and say "How has your
life been?" so they resort to such methods. The only other reason I see
is that they have a very bad or less impacted memory. Somehow the
memory of them punching you in the throat in high school was lost or
from their perspective simply became water under the digital bridge.
Facebook has uses other than gossip and party pics. It really is a great way to stay in touch with loves one and promote business. Facebook isn't the problem, it the people who uses it. It like an old saying "Guns don't kill people, people kills people". People gives facebook a bad rep.
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree. I never said Facebook was the problem. I just think a lot of people aren't fully aware of what they are doing when they use it. On the other hand, people know exactly what they are doing when they pull a trigger.
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