In the world that we live in, technology is always constantly and rapidly changing and improving. Much of modern day invention aims to improve the quality of our lives, to provide us with better comfort as well as to fulfil our endless material wants. With such modern day inventions, our lives are constantly improving and changing. One of the latest inventions has to be the social networking website, facebook.  I believe that facebook will be able to ignite some changes in our life. In fact, some changes have already been made to the way in which we communicate because of this new invention.

            Facebook is a social networking website created by a group of Harvard students. Initially, the website was created only for fellow Harvard students to share photos and to catch up with each other. Soon, this networking website became open to the rest of the public. Facebook has now become a very widely used social network, connecting people together, from strangers to acquaintances to close friends. It is a like a one stop information centre that allows us to view photos of our friends, as well as leave messages and catch up with long lost friends. I have noticed that in recent months, a lot of communication has been done through the facebook website. I realised that many people have started to use facebook as a platform to ask about the well being of their friends and some even use facebook to wish their friends on special occasions such as birthdays. This goes to show that facebook has slowly become a new tool of communication.

            Can facebook really become a new form of communication? In my opinion, facebook as a means of communication is not really very safe and it lacks the privacy as well. Many people are happy with the services that facebook provide, except for one problem, the problem of privacy.  Recently, there has been much talk about one of facebook’s newest service, which is the spreading of personal information without consent from the user. Facebook notifies the friends of users about their purchases. Some of such incidents may lead to awkward situations occurring. Imagine yourself purchasing a pregnancy kit from online stores, and everyone around you knowing about your purchase. The next day when you go to work, everyone around you ask about your pregnancy. How awkward that will be! This lack of privacy and the openness of facebook make it rather unsafe to use. You never know, your boss or arch rivals may have been using facebook to check you up.

            Another issue that I have with facebook is the fact that it does not have a personal touch. Unlike emails or short messages, wall messages left on facebook are not made private. They are open for everyone to see. This reduces the ‘personal touch’ that other forms of communication encourage. If facebook becomes a new tool of communication, I believe that many of us would lose the ‘personal touch’ that is present in many face to face relationships. We might have known a lot of other people through facebook, but the depth of each personal relationship may be diluted.

            However, even though with all these shortfalls, I still believe that facebook is a up and rising star as a communication tool between friends, acquaintances and even strangers. Perhaps due to the fast pace of our society, this quick tool which allows us to catch up and learn more about the lives of our friends at our own convenience is hence gaining popularity. Perhaps there would even be a day where people would ask others to check out their facebook profile when the other party wants to know more about them. This saves the hassle of giving a personal introduction. A quick, hassle-free and fun way of communicating with a small loss of privacy and personal touch still sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

References

1.      Thoughts on facebook—http://www.cit.cornell.edu/policy/memos/facebook.html

2.      Are facebook feeds good or bad—http://www.ipatrix.com/facebook-feeds-good-or-bad/