Diffusion of Innovations: Facebook

 

    Facebook was one of the first of many popular social medias. After its launch in 2004, some ran to make accounts and join in on the fun with their friends. Others were weary of this website and were unsure if creating an account was a good idea. 

    Facebook was so popular because for a while, it was one of the only social media sites that almost everyone you knew used. It was new territory for most. Gradually, people started to gain knowledge on how to use this site and on how to get as many people as you can to react to your posts. This was especially appealing to teenagers. Teenagers love attention and they love keeping up with what their friends are doing. I am personally a victim of this. People often became early adopters of facebook, especially the younger generations. With something so new, many young people wanted to give it a try. Facebook was a new, fun way to know what your peers were doing without having to know these people in real life. It started new relationships and people started to bond over their common interests. To most of the public, this was appealing. To some, there was still suspicion. 

    Why wouldn't someone want to follow what the rest of their friends are doing? What makes people adopt these sites late- or not even adopt them at all? For one, my father is one of those people that refused to ever adopt Facebook. Why he insists in this? He says people get too attached to it and that there is too much drama on there. He is mostly referring to my extended family members who post every moment of their lives on there. Some people in this generation actually want privacy, but that is clearly not most. Facebook is not just about sharing your life and hobbies with everyone, it also prompts you to share lots of personal information upon signup. This may seem unusual to those like my father who grew up without social media. He questions why anybody would want to share that much personal info just to register to a site. It also does not help that Facebook has proved itself to be untrustworthy. Several sources have come out saying that Facebook often gets hacked and tons of personal account information is stolen. This can be unsafe because companies may distribute this data to the wrong people. This is how hackers, scammers, and identity thieves come to be. 

    Facebook can be a very negative technology, but it can also be very beneficial. As i explained before, Facebook has multiple problems with information leaking. This is a very negative downside of the app. Nobody wants all of their personal information out there, especially if they trusted a site not to give it out. Although that is a very negative downside, Facebook has also done a lot of great things. It has helped bring our society together and promote the positive things in life. It causes a large outreach and can bring attention to crucial things that we should be educated on. Although these are all positives, I am unsure if they outweigh the negatives. I feel that the theft and leaking of information is more crucial than sharing your life and personal opinions with your online friends. Some may believe different. From an ethical standpoint, I would much rather protect myself from the scary people that are online.