So many kids and adults use the internet today in this world. One website that is known around the world is Facebook®. I, myself, am a Facebook® user, and I believe there are advantages and disadvantages to having an account. You can share things with friends and family and stay in touch; it can give you something to do. But, as most things, it can cause problems such as, gossip, rumors, and if you don’t use it right it could be dangerous.

On Facebook® you make an account with a username and password. Then you have your own profile page where you can have a profile picture, a paragraph about yourself, your interests, favorite movies, top friends, and the list can go on and on. Unlike many websites where you have your own profile, you can choose who can and can’t see it. Anyone can request to be your friend, but they can’t see anything but your name and profile picture until you accept them. After awhile, you can have a bunch of friends on your account.
It’s such an easy way to stay in touch. They can see pictures you upload and see what you’re up to if you keep your status updated. For example, I have two aunts that live about two hours away; I’m friends with both of them on Facebook ® and it’s our main source of communication. We send each other messages and write on each others profile wall. It’s nice because we are all so busy it’s hard to have time to call each other. On Facebook® we all don’t have to be on at the same time to communicate. It’s also easy to keep in touch with friends that go to different schools or have moved to college.

It’s an advantage to stay in touch with people as well as to provide entertainment. Facebook® has many cool applications you can load. My favorite is Piknik®. It’s an application where you can take pictures from your account and edit them. You can do anything from changing it to black and white, to pasting a cute quote right on the picture. I love taking pictures, so I spend a lot of time editing them. Another application I like is Notes. You can write a note, or short story and tag people in them. I think it’s fun and it adds spunk to my profile. Not only does Facebook® have applications, but it also has games you can play. I don’t play any usually, but I have a lot of friends that do. A popular one seems to be Farmville. It’s a fun thing for people to do on the internet.

Facebook® definitely has its advantages, but there are some disadvantages as well. Being in high school, Facebook® can cause a lot of drama. It’s and easy place to spread gossip and misinterpret things. For example, there was a girl that put a picture of her profile. It was clear that it wasn’t her even though she said it was. There was a group of girls that harassed and bullied her for a couple days about it. Pretty soon everyone was starting to hear what was going on and comment on the picture too. It got so bad the girl deleted the picture and her feelings were obviously hurt. Another time a couple that broke up after being together for awhile. They had pictures together on there profiles. After they broke up the guy edited a picture of them together and he scratched the girls face out of the picture. Things like this don’t always s happen on Facebook®, but they do occur sometimes.

Drama can be started easily on Facebook® but if you don’t know how to use it safely it could become very dangerous. Like I said before, Facebook® is a world wide website. For someone to be able to see your profile page you would have to accept them as a friend. If you don’t pay attention to who you’re accepting or you make your profile public, you could let anyone see your profile. In a matter of five minutes they could know your name, what school you to, your age, your phone number, and email address, they could find out who your friends are, and they could look at your pictures. If you’re not careful, it could be easy for the wrong person to fine that stuff out, stalk you, and possibly harm you. With any website like Facebook® you’re going to have problems, but this would be a disadvantage to any world wide website.

Facebook® is great if you know how to use it. Everyone needs to be friendly and consider others while they’re on Facebook®. There are advantages and disadvantages. Many people use it form kids to adults. Play it safe and have fun.