Facebook is one of the most popular websites out there today, with over a billion active users, and over 100 billion hours spent on the website per month, it’s become arguably the biggest social media website ever. For some, it’s just a way to keep in touch with friends, but for others, its big business. In 2012, Facebook made over $5 billion in revenue, which isn’t too shabby for a free service. Of course, there are a lot of potential dangers to be had when dealing with Facebook. No website is perfect, and it’s important that people are away of the potential hazards that can be attributed to Facebook and the internet in general. The first danger is one that Facebook shares with pretty much the entirety of the internet. You never know who you’re really talking to. You never know who is on the other end of the internet and who is sitting at the computer. Facebook is pretty good about requiring a real name and valid email address and whatnot to make an account, but it’s still easy enough to make fake accounts. At the same time, Facebook always does their best to make it clear that you should only be friends with people you actually know. If you decline a friend invite, it will ask if you know the person. If you say no, and enough other people say no, then that account is banned from Facebook. So they are doing their best to make sure you’re only talking to people you know, but there are still a ton of people who just friend request everybody they see, and who accepts anybody that sends them a friend request. These people don’t seem to care about the potential dangers. What goes along with this is the need for privacy. Facebook has gotten a lot better with their privacy policies, making less account information visible by default. A couple of years ago you could see pretty much anybody’s full profile, you could see pictures, personal information such as birthday, posts and likes. Nobody really cared what the public could see. Luckily the demand for more privacy options has been something that the public has been pushing and Facebook has listened. You can’t really “Facebook stalk” people anymore because everybody’s profile is private by default. As safe as you may think you are, just by putting your information out there, it’s making you more vulnerable to those who would do you harm. Like I said, it’s getting better, but it can never be completely safe. One of the more serious revenge effects that Facebook can have, especially for college students who will soon be out in the world looking for a job, is the fact that many employers will search for a potential employee’s profile and try to find anything that might be incriminating. This has a little bit in common with the privacy concerns that I talked about above, but employers don’t want to do you harm, they want to hire you. If you post questionable things on Facebook, they will see it and they will pass on you and move on to the next person. There was a big controversy fairly recently about some employers requiring employees to give them their Facebook passwords. In a case like this, it doesn’t matter what kind of security your profile has, or how private you make it. They can look at everything from the inside. Private messages, private photo albums, anything they want. Several states have banned the practice, and it’s greatly looked down upon but it still happens and there isn’t really much that anybody can do about it until more laws explicitly ban it. This is one that I think people tend to forget about. Everybody knows that it happens, but everybody forgets about it until they apply for a job and get rejected even though the interview seemed to go well. It’s one of those situations that can really only hurt you. Nothing that an employer could see on your Facebook page is really going to make them like you more, or make them more likely to hire you. At best, it’s going to be a situation where they don’t see anything, so it doesn’t count against you. Going along with the employers checking your page, it’s also common to see lawyers taking a look if you get into any kind of legal trouble. If you get arrested for drunk driving and your defense is that the breathalyzer wasn’t accurate and it malfunctioned, then the prosecutor goes on your Facebook page only to see an album of you doing shots with your buddies an hour or two before you got arrested, then chances are, you’re going to jail. It’s another one of those situations where it can only hurt you. This case especially, because often times it’s an album that one of your friends uploaded and even though you didn’t have any part in uploading it or sharing it, it still appears on your page because you were tagged in it. This is obviously a huge danger, not only could it put you out of the running for a job that you want, but it could also put you right in jail. The final dangers are the ones associated with letting young children have their own Facebook pages. This group of dangers is greatly increased simply due to the fact that young children simply don’t know that these dangers exist and don’t take the necessary steps to prevent them from happening. Now obviously a 12 year old kid on Facebook doesn’t really have to worry about getting denied for that accounting job he wanted, or getting thrown in jail because of the album of him doing shots at a bar before he drives home, but the dangers that have to do with privacy are still there. First of all, Facebook has a 13 year old age requirement, so letting your 11 or 12 year old make their own account is basically telling them that it’s okay to lie, which is an not a pattern that you want to teach them. Secondly, it’s very easy to come across content that is not appropriate for an 11 year old on Facebook, whether that content is sexual, vulgar, or drug and alcohol related. There are plenty of things that you could see that you absolutely would want to shield your child from. Thirdly, even if your child is only spending time on Facebook, the chances that they see a link to a third party website is pretty much 100%, and that third party website could contain all sorts of things that are all sorts of dangerous. Whether it be more explicit content, or even giving your computer some kind of malware or virus. Combine this with the fact that cyber bullying is becoming much more common and prevalent. It’s one thing to be bullied at school, you can just go home and that’s the end of it until tomorrow. Now with social media platforms like Facebook, you get bullied all day at school, only to come home and have a bunch of Facebook notifications that all lead to even more bullying. All in all, as wildly popular as Facebook is, it is still extremely dangerous and has to potential to ruin your life if you don’t act properly and safely while using it. Many people know about all of those dangers but just scoff and brush it off, thinking that those things could never happen to them. And they are right, it won’t happen to them. Until it does.

Works Cited http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/facebook-age-requirement-lying-study_n_2213125.html http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/