ULAB 2122- ADVANCED ACADEMIC ENGLISH

SKILLS

DISADVANTAGES OF FACEBOOK USAGE

AMONG THE COMMUNITY

NAME: (a) A14MJ0056 MEGAT MUHAMMAD AMIRUL NAIM BIN

MAHARI

(b) A14MJ0077 MUHAMMAD FIKRI BIN ZAKARIA

SEKSYEN: 92

SESSION: 2014/2015 SEMESTER 2

DISADVANTAGES OF FACEBOOK USAGE AMONG THE COMMUNITY

 Mark Zuckerberg, just a common computer programmer who has enrolled at Harvard
University, has been the youngest billionaire just by creating Facebook which have many
great purposes. One of them are obviously the Facebook can connect people around the
world. You can make friend with the people across the sea although youre never met before
just by simply by Friend Request. Besides, you can always update what are happening
around you every day just by posting it into your Facebook wall in the form of words,
pictures, and also videos. Others can view your entire update wall when he/she is friend with
you in the Facebook. This will make you know your friend better although that either of you
havent meet in the real life or this can be a preparation before meeting them face to face.
After that, much information can be obtained just by viewing the Facebook news Feeds.
Nowadays, all the latest news are on the Facebook which are more accurate and fast than
other media resources such as the newspapers, television news and many more. Facebook
will be the fastest track in obtaining the information with access to it everywhere, anytime.
Facebook obviously have been one of the daily routines in our daily life. But all the
community should not misuse the Facebook which can cause any negative implications.

There were many disadvantages of Facebook usage among the Community. One of
them is it can cause addiction. Wong (2005) state that the addiction can be defined by the
inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioural control, and craving, diminished
recognition of significant problems with ones behaviours and interpersonal relationships and
dysfunctional emotional response. There were many reasons for the addiction to occur. One
of them is ego related reason which has many friends list just to show everyone else that
he/she popular, although he/she only knew a few of them. There are also some people feeling
important only when their friend post something on his wall Facebook. Most of the time
addiction towards Facebook are caused by those who too shy to talk to others in the real life.
They feeling comfortable when there are using virtual world as the Facebook as the medium
to talk to others. Young (2009) mention that there are 5 different internet addiction types
which are computer addiction, searching addiction on internet, shopping or betting on
internet, online pornography addiction, friendship addiction on internet(Facebook) and
clinical psychologist perspective: Facebook Addiction Disorder. He also states the addiction
criteria which are neglect of personal life, mental preoccupation, escapism and mood
modifying experiences. Researcher of the University of Chicago, William (2002) recently
state that more than 8,000 reports of everyday desires from 250 participants, and the results
show that quitting using social site such as Twitter and Facebook was more difficult than
giving up alcohol or cigarettes. This follow a study of Web search analytics data by marketing
firm The Internet Time Machine, which state that the term Facebook addiction has become
one of the most searched terms in the website, (but alcohol addiction still ranking higher on
the list). Like stress, Facebook addiction has been linked to FOMO (Fear of missing out). Dar
Meshi, postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universitt in Germany and lead author of the
study, explains "as human beings, we evolved to care about our reputation. In today's world,
one way we are able to manage our reputation is by using Facebook. For example,
questionnaires often depend on a person's memory, which may or may not be accurate.
Martin and her team have conducted an investigation relate to the respondent Facebook
activity related to phase which some of the people showed schizotypy, assortment of
symptoms including social withdrawal to unusual thing. Anhedonia symptoms (the ability to
encounter happiness from normally enjoyable activities, such as interacting with others) have
been detected among the volunteers. These people are passive, less number of friend list,
fewer pictures, and have Facebook Profile many years ago.

Besides that, cyber-bullying is also one of the disadvantages of Facebook usage

among community. The communication technology such as mobile phone, instant messaging,
email, chat rooms or social networking such as Facebook and Tweeter also can be used to
harass, threaten and intimidate someone. Nowadays normally cyber-bullying involved
teenagers due to development of technology. The bully can disguise her/his true identity
behind on electronic veil. According to Mark Ellis (2013), two out of three 13- to 22-year-
olds who were surveyed have been victims of online bullying, which could mean some 5.43
million young people are estimated to have experienced the menace. There are some causes
of cyber-bullying among the teenagers such as family and peers. Permissive parents and their
child demanding behaviour might increase the negative attitude that could lead to cyber-
bullying. Children that lack of supervision form their parents and parent that too strict can
create aggressiveness in a childs psychology, as well as the existence of domestic violence
whether through parent modelling of bullying behaviour or by being victimized by older
siblings. Some aggressive children who have high status in school among their friends may
use bullying as the solution in order to enhance their social power and protect their prestige
with peers, while other children that from low social status may use bullying to strengthen
their bonding with the higher status one. One of the effects of cyber-bullying to the victim is
commits suicide. According to Probando (2013), Two girls were arrested in connection with
the death of 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick, who committed suicide last month after being the
target of online bullying and the police said a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl were
charged as juveniles with felony aggravated stalking on Monday, according to a release from
the Polk County sheriffs office. This shown that cyber-bullying is very serious cases
nowadays and not only harms the victim mentally but also physically.

False identity in Facebook which the person has Facebooks account that is not the
real person, a fictitious name, pictures and background. The person could be a man disguised
as a woman or older posing as a teenager or vice versa. Based on the journal by Al-Jubayer
(2013), About 49% of the respondents indicated that they either did not mind the
activity or they had no opinion one way or another while 51% of the respondents indicated it
bothered them that some people have false identities. The purpose of making a false
identity in this social network is to spy on friends profiles (stalks). As we already know that
Facebook has a feature where a user can block others user. The user cannot know the activity
of the others user on Facebook even they have shared friends. When ex-boyfriend/ex-
girlfriend has been blocked by their ex and he/she really wants to spy their ex, they will
create another fake account to spy (stalk) their ex. Other than that, this fake account also can
be used to troll their friends, community or organization by posting something that causes
controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as
an online discussion forum or chat room. According to Al-Jubayer (2013), the primary goal of
this person is to provoke the other users into an emotionally response or to generally disrupt
normal on-topic discussion. Hence, this attitude also can relate with another bad behaviour;
cyber-bullying. The users can report the fake account to Facebook and the account will be
blocked or removed. Hence, the nowadays community should concerned about privacy issues
online and thinking about possible dangers of sharing public information.

Furthermore, this social network also can cause depression and loneliness among
teenagers. Depression is common. This symptom can affect our daily life and become very
distressing. Meanwhile, loneliness is a feel like nobody around us and causes people to feel
empty and unwanted. According to Rebecca Savastio (2013), In Sweden, researchers at the
University of Gothenburg studied 1,011 people and found results showed that Facebook
usage had a significant negative relationship with self-esteem. In other words, the results
indicated that users who spend more time on Facebook have lower self-esteem. This shown
that Facebook can increase peoples stress level and negatively affects a persons sense of self
and anxiety. Its very dangerous when someone keep feeling depression and loneliness
because it can affect their mental health and then, can lead someone to commit suicide. Based
on the article by Marissa Maldonado (2014), Another study showed that Facebook increases
peoples anxiety levels by making them feel inadequate and generating excess worry and
stress. Additionally, two-thirds had difficulty sleeping due to anxiety and other negative
emotions after they had used the sites. Case study is saying that anxiety also can cause
insomnia because this social network always keeps constantly update from time to time.
Hence, this motivates that person to check their status and newsfeed continuously only with
using portable communication devices; mobile phone or laptop. It is important to beware with
these social sites because it can make our mental health disorder, such as anxiety and
depression.

Facebook can also be the medium for the spread of the viruses or scam. Facebook is
filled with thousands of daily users from all around the world and it is common for you to
find out a number of viruses storming through most of the Facebook pages. It is believe that
Facebook were involved several hackers who actually steal other peoples account. Viruses
such as the computer virus can be defined as the malware program which when be executed,
will replicates itself into other programme in the data files, book sector of hard drive in the
computer. While Scam is the phishing website which is similar to Facebook facing them to
log in using their email and password which then can further their spam and malware process.
There was much different type of viruses which are dangerous for the Facebook user. One of
them is click/Like jacking which involves tricking the Facebook users into clicking on a link
that notify the one that your friends have liked. The link would then lead them to a page
where they will be asked to clicking on a button that says the user is over 18. This action, in
turn would activate a code that would automatically post a message that you have also liked
that subject on your wall and thus spreading the scam to your network. The most popular
viruses which keep spreading in the Facebook is the koobfake virus (Facebook Accounts
Fake) which allowed the account to be hacked by sending invitation message to target to click
on video and upgrade the video player to watch it. When the users click the downloaded file,
their computer will be controlled by the hackers completely.
 Perhaps this statement a little bit strange, but it is really occur in all around the world,
which is the Facebook can cause divorce or induced jealousy among the partners. Social
network such as the Facebook can be the best medium to find a new friends especially with
different gender, which can induced towards jealousy to your mate. The study led by Dr
Russell Clayton (2010) of the University of Missouri, U.S., surveyed Facebook users aged
with the age of range of 18 and 82, asking them how often they used the social network and
how much they had bust-ups with their partners - past or present that had been revealed by
the site. He states that people with romantic relationship tend to observe their partners
Facebook activity often, which will lead to jealousy when there is slight interaction with
someone else in the Facebook. Although Facebook is the best way to know someone else, it
can also affect the new-relationships partners. A U.K. divorce site found that even in Dec.
2009, 20 percent of "behaviour petitions" (which is British lingo for "reasons to file for
divorce") contained the word "Facebook" in them, meaning that the Facebook was the
indicator for the marriage's problem. Just a couple of years later, that percentage jumped to 33
percent. The main reason for the jealousy toward the partner is because of the inappropriate
messages sent to the friends in the site with opposites sex. Russell Clayton (2010), surveyed
205 Facebook users with the age range of 18 and 82 and the result show indicate 79 percent
of whom reported being in a romantic relationship does not have serious conflict between
their partners about the their use of Facebook. He said Facebook-induced jealousy may lead
to arguments concerning past partners. Also, their result show that excessive Facebook users
are more likely to connect or reconnect with other Facebook users, including previous
partners, which may focus to emotional and physical cheating.

Last but not least, Facebook usage may change our normal life no matter positively or
the other way around. A normal life would mean a total balance between professional life and
personal life. It is the fact that no matter how successful you are at what you do now, you
cant be completely happy if you dont have a clean personal life. The employee may tend to
know your personality, and also your personal life outside the professional area before they
want to take you to work with them. When they search and find out about your social
network full of offensive content, you may have the higher percentage to lose the job.
Facebook will be the one that they search first as it is the most popular social site nowadays.
According to Jobvites (2013), 93% of hiring managers said that they prefer to look at
candidates social profiles during the recruiting process, which included 1,200 managers
globally. Nearly 39% of US-based employers use social networking sites to research job
candidates and 43% of them said that they made their decision not to hire a candidate,
according to a 2013 survey by global job site CareerBuilder.com. Besides, the Facebook can
be the major disease which can consume our time every second. Many hours may also pass
when using Facebook and you could have done something more important than sitting around
facing the monitor. Researchers with the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life
Project conducted a national phone survey of Facebook users and just released a report on the
findings. The findings are; 20 to 30 percent of very active Facebook users called "power
users" are responsible for a lot of the friend requests, tags, posts, and messages we all receive,
Facebook users average 7 new friends a month; men are more likely to send a friend request,
women are more likely to receive one and many more. This show that how many of our
wasted time is use just to satisfy the need in the Facebook.

As the conclusion, obviously the Facebook have more disadvantages rather than the
advantages which will affect our social life, privacy no matter in a short or long-life term. It
can cause addiction, medium for cyber bullying, threat of virus/scam, false identities, induced
divorce problem and also ruining our normal life. It is depend on us as the individual or the
society to know how to control the Facebook fever from getting worse. The cooperation
from all different branch of the society will be the main element which leads to a better
future.

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