The Web Explorer

The world is getting smaller and is in our hand without any limits. The presence of one of the most popular social networking sites, Facebook has strengthened   what Friedman stated in his popular book, The World is Flat (see the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat ). You can easily get connected and collaborated with other people around the world.

I have joined Facebook two years ago after getting several invitations from my friends and this was my first experience using social networking site. Just like what my friends have told before, indeed, it was fun and enjoyable. I can met again with my old friend who had not meet directly since 15 years ago which is nearly impossible without facebook’s help. Although I’m not relatively active in facebook, it was pleasures to follow some groups, read and make comments to my friends pages. Overall, Facebook gives me a lot of positive experiences although I do realized that in some way, facebook gives the negative effect for me as well.

Based on my observation in `facebook`  world, I noted several negative aspect of Facebook (I called it ‘The Dark Side of Facebook’) that may harm and bother people if not properly used:

• Broadcast effect: Facebook has wall facility that enables people to read every comment and dialog that are written in our wall. As each person can read and make comment on what is written on a wall this may break the privacy. The best way of using the wall is by learning and making a proper privacy setting. Some people have completely shut down the wall feature, other allow their wall to be written but hiding the reply messages, etc.
• Self-Explore effect: It cannot be avoided that in the end, Facebook will be the most effective showcase of our personality . Facebook is the place where narcism can be happened easily. Some people can manage their image and personality’s perfection but some cannot. The best way that we can do is to be our self and do not pretend to be a perfect person.
• Addiction effect: It is hard to deny that facebook within its features can make people addicted. Facebook can create social autism which makes people are so busy with their Facebook pages and forget with their real social life.
• Intelligence effect: Offering easy access to the information, Facebook can be an effective and efficient ‘secret agent’ to investigate other people and somehow this may bring some sad stories to us due to misused of Facebook. Selecting and investigating people when try to add and confirm as a Facebook friends is the best way to hinder it.

Nevertheless, don’t be afraid to use social networking sites. It always depend on its end user (man behind the gun, not the gun itself). As long as we know the limits and appropriately use it, we can gain a lot of positive aspects. We can use Facebook or other social network sites to enrich our knowledge, to support our job and daily life or just using it for refreshing tools. It’s depend on you and what you need.