Facebook Dangers

Abstract

Facebook creates many dangers that are unseen by many of its users. These dangers are mostly due to predators that lurk online, waiting to take advantage of an unsuspecting person on a social networking site such as Facebook. The dangers Facebook has are doubled for those people who are addicted to the website. Those people who are so called Facebook addicts need to find ways to limit their time on Facebook to protect them. In addition, the people on sites like Facebook need to limit the amount of personal information they disclose on their profile. The people that fill in every category possible to describe themselves on Facebook such as address, phone number, current city and others are also very probable to be victims of predators. These people need to break the addiction to Facebook and put less personal information on their profile to protect themselves from this imparticular danger.

Facebook is a popular social networking site, which has over 350 million members worldwide and growing, who collectively spend time on the website every day, checking in with friends, writing on peoples electronic walls, clicking through photos and generally keeping pace with the drift of their social world (Hafner, 1). With this high of popularity of a website though comes extreme vulnerability, vulnerability in the sense of people taking advantage of the unknowing users. Some of those 350 million members that have a Facebook account are not using the website for checking in with friends or keeping up with their social world but for something, that endangers people. Those users use Facebook to attempt to take advantage of unsuspecting men, women, boys, and girls. This is a substantial danger, especially for the younger users because they are so unsuspecting of a person on Facebook, attempting to take advantage of them. People who use Facebook do not fully understand the hidden dangers that lurk on this website thus should think twice about what information they disclose on this website for there is the risk that a predator may access your personal information and use it for what they wish.

There is a compelling argument about how Facebook has caused addiction in some cases to some of its users. Can a website really cause an addiction? According to psychologist Dr. Kimberly Young, "yes it can." Dr. Young said she had spoken with dozens of teenagers trying to break the Facebook habit (Hafner, 1). Dr. Young also stated, "It is like any other addiction and it is hard to wean yourself" (Hafner, 1). The average time spent on Facebook in a month for a typical user is 169 minutes, according to ComScore (Hempel, 1). That number of 169 minutes a month may not seem like someone is addicted, but I know some people who spend hours each day on Facebook. I am one of those people. I spend probably at least two hours per day on Facebook. I would consider myself addicted to Facebook, every time I sit down at the computer the first thing I do without even thinking is go to Facebook.com. I sometimes am sidetracked on Facebook for hours. Facebook's addiction problem affects all ages not just the younger children. Dan Kimball has proof of the addiction in colleges as he says, while visiting a Christian college, I was sitting in the back of the classroom and noticed that about a third of the students were surfing Facebook or MySpace while the professor was passionately teaching the New Testament (Kimball, 1). The college students are not alone in addiction. The society's youth ranging from ages eight to sixteen also seem quite attached to this website. It is extremely dangerous to have a child between these ages to have a un- monitored Facebook account, due to the information that a young teen or child could potentially make available on their profile. If a parent monitors the account, then they can control what information is disclosed and help protect their child. Facebook addiction is something that needs to be taken seriously because it can have various negative effects. The more active a person is on Facebook, the more likely the online predators will target them.

Many people do not realize that there are predators online that will attempt to access your information for their own benefit, whether that benefit is sexual, physical or even for cyber bullying. The problem is not that the predators add the unsuspecting as friends on Facebook, the problem is the information that you choose to display on your Facebook. Facebook has multiple categories to describe yourself on its site such as, name, address, phone number, hometown, current city, where you work, where you attend school, your birthday, and many other categories. Putting all of this information on your Facebook is such a dangerous thing to do. To access the information all a predator has to do is click the info button on your Facebook wall; sometimes even if you are not friends with a person,