Influence of Facebook

 ”New media is any media – from newspaper articles and blogs to music and podcasts – that are delivered digitally.” - Cote, Southern New Hampshire University 2020

New media is always changing and giving us new ways to develop ourselves and maintain our relationships. Facebook one of the largest social media platforms with 2.8 billion users in 2020 and gives us plenty of possibilities to use our free time. Before digging too deeply on the impact and purpose of Facebook I would like to start by exploring the time before Facebook.

Facebook (photo-1563986768494-4dee2763ff3f)

In my opinion before Facebook people used to socialize more and have more face-to-face meetings with each others. They used to call more to each others and even visit just to change few words. I remember when I was kid and I walked couple kilometers to my friend’s home just to ask if they have time to play with me even I didn’t know are they home even.

Before Facebook people were using traditional communication tools and more different social media platform to share content and entertain themselves. Back then Friendster, Myspace and Second Life among others were popular but so many people wasn’t as engaged with them and didn’t share their daily stuff as much as they do nowadays with Facebook.

”On February 4, 2004, a Harvard sophomore named Mark Zuckerberg launches The Facebook, a social media website he had built in order to connect Harvard students with one another. By the next day, over a thousand people had registered, and that was only the beginning.” - History.com

After launching Facebook and it started to spread, first from university to university and then across the world, becoming not only an incredibly valuable company but also one of the most important institutions of the early 21st century. The site (originally called Facemash) grew in size and students from other colleges and high schools were allowed to join. In September 2006, the site was opened up for everyone to register. Like other sites, you can put up your own profile and share pictures and videos. However, Facebook has a clever system of networks and groups that you can belong to. Many of these are based around college and work networks but there are quirky common interest groups.

Facebook and its Messenger have made our communication to more efficient level than it used to be on it’s own way, it gives us a possibility to send messages fast and share our ideas immediately when we get them. Helps to maintain our relationships to our long-distance friends and relatives.
First Facebook’s main purpose was to connect the students of Harvard but then like all good inventions it started to spread and people got to know about it fast. 
Simplelearn.com listed that people share their information to entertain others, define theirselves, to grow and nourish theirs relationships. To get to know about different brands and to write reviews on them.

 Nowadays the personal engagement and social interactions are the core purposes of Facebook. It’s build to be addictive and entertaining. It’s a place we want to open again and again to keep on track of everything. 

Even thought Facebook has brought a lot of good changes to our daily even hourly life it has brought plenty of downsides too. These are isolation, jealousy, strong addiction, cyberbullying and lack of privacy among others.

The burning question here is, is Facebook connecting us more or just tearing us apart ?

Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ (accessed 15.02.2021)
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/facebook-launches-mark-zuckerberg (accessed 13.02.2021, published 24.10.2019)
https://www.simplilearn.com/real-impact-social-media-article (accessed 13.02.2021, published 04.02.2021)
https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/newsroom/2020/02/what-is-new-media (accessed 13.02.2021, published 24.02.2020)
https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2018/09/07/how-facebook-has-changed-the-way-we-socialize/ (accessed 13.02.2021, published 07.09.2018)
https://medium.com/@lisa_jewell/facebook-fad-or-the-future-4a69c9305482 (accessed 15.02.2021, published 17.08.2019)