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Fatimah Altuhaifa Greg LCC 29 November 2012 Investigation in Disadvantages and Advantages of Facebook for College Students Facebook is ubiquitous especially among young people. According to the Associated Press in Yahoo finance, Facebook is used by 1.01 billion people in September 2012. Also, according to Mary Bellis the Facebook ( thefacebook in that time ) in begging was assigned only for Harvard universitys students in 2004. After that, Facebook had no sooner opened for all universities around the world than enormous number of students used it (Bellis). The information that Facebook has about each user was what attracted students to use it. Facebook grew until it became one of the most popular websites. The spreading of the site holds disadvantages and advantages. For that, this research paper aims to investigate the disadvantages and advantages of using Facebook for college students especially in using the Wall, uploading pictures and videos, and following groups. Updating Statues One of the most common features of Facebook is the wall which shows posts of users status, videos, and pictures as well as their friends. Users can post on their own wall or in their friends wall. However, the most use of these posts is statue posts. In fact, because of the common use of statue wall, there are special websites for Facebooks statues that users can use or implicit an idea from such as the http://www.facebookstatus123.com/ website. The users statues usually are about their plan for vacation or weekend, their emotional, or news.

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A detail about holiday plans ("REUTERS ") usually are posted by 38 percent of Facebooks users and Twitters users. While a detail about weekend away are posted by 33 percent of users ("REUTERS "). One of the survey showed that 64 percent of users posts on their wall about their vacation plan while most of them have friends on their Facebook who are younger than them and those younger friends usually share information with strange friends
("REUTERS "). These kinds of posting are indirect messages that tell everyone in internet when

users will be out of their home and where they will be in that time (Popkin). En example of how posting in Facebook wall could result in crime is what CBSnews broadcasted about woman who had posted in her Facebook wall before she left her home. This woman posted that she was going to concert which was nearby to the Louisville at 8 p.m and because of that she would not be at home. After she had left her home, the burglars came to her home and stole more than 10000$ of worth ("The Early Show"). The other disadvantage of updating statues in Facebook is that most of the students feel bad about themselves because of their friends statues. Happiness, love, and optimist statues, which take the majority in Facebooks walls, make other users who read them feel that they are the only one who has sadness or problems. Stanford University made several study to show about updating statues and the reaction of college students toward these statues. The first study aimed to figure out why most of the posted are has positive feeling and the result of this study showed that students hide their negative posted by making them privet while they make their positive feeling or posted public or can be seen to their friends. This illustrate why most of the posting are positive. As a result, users think that they are the only one who has negative feeling or has a problem in life. This believes, increase the isolation of users and decrease the selfestimate (Szalavitz).

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These disadvantages of Facebooks wall do not prevent Facebooks wall from having advantage for college students. One of the studies showed that nine of ten college students use Facebook. Moreover, 58 percent of college students like to communicate with other students and talk over their homework and exams by using Facebook (Rice). Students can use statues to ask people about homework that they missed, to ask for help in homework, to post to other students what was the homework, to discuss their projects or exams, or to identify the misunderstanding of the lecture. Also, some students write about their studying progress such as I have finished reviewing chapter four and moving to chapter five. This kind of statues can influence other students who read these statues to study in order to be in progress with their classmates or to be better than them. In addition to that, according to the article "Students Push Their Facebook Use Further Into Course Work." which is written by Rice there are nine out of ten students use Facebook (Rice), which means 90 percent of college students use Facebook, posting about homework, exams, or projects on walls ensures that the other students will read the posting. Another advantage of using updating statue is that some students share the new information about their courses in the wall which results in keeping this information for long time in their memory and their friends memory. Also, some of posting could work such as a remainder for students about the due day of the assignment or about the exam day. Uploading pictures and videos Uploading pictures and videos are other applications that college students use in Facebook. These pictures and videos, which include places, students themselves or some activities, could be opened to the public or private. However, application such as this may not be clearly important or dangerous. Therefore, students use it without paying attention to its disadvantages or advantages.

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Uploading pictures or videos to the internet results some problems such as making crime easier for thieves or burglars. Showing pictures or videos that contain value items such as jewelry, expansive electronic devices, or money could motivate thieves to burgle users houses, the users who own these pictures or videos (Zhethzuke). In addition to that, these pictures or videos could show the design of the house or the space that value items are in, which makes the house easier and quicker to burgle (Zhethzuke). Moreover, the burglars can know the users city, or home area from the pictures or the videos. Other use of pictures or videos is to ridicule at others, which result in ruining the relationship between the students and the other students, their family, or their friend. Also, funny pictures denote irresponsible persons. So, when these users who upload ridicule or immature pictures or videos applying for a job, they could lose the opportunity due to this immature poste (Choudhury). An example of that is the four nursing students who were expelled from the university after they posted pictures of themselves working on a human placenta in their college lab. Although the pictures does not show whose placenta this is, they were expelled from the university (Daily Mail Reporter). On the other hand, uploading pictures or videos can provide students some benefits with some careful use. Students can record some lectures and post them in Facebook to share with other students who missed the lectures. Also, some students take pictures of the board in the class especially when it has the homework questions and they post them in Facebook to share them with their classmate. Other students share the pictures of their note with their friends or colleague in Facebook.

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Following groups In normal life, group is gathering of people who share specific talent, believe, behavior, hobby, work, or class. Also, group of people is a result of human natural that tends to be with those who have same interests. For that, Facebook went in for having application that allows users to create groups. Several kinds of groups can be found in Facebook. However, the groups those attract students are related to education, work, or interest. One of the most important disadvantages of groups in Facebook is the amount of notifications that are sent to users e-mail. Usually, these notifications come as a result of the ability to add users to the group without taking their permission or confirmation and because the default setting of sending notifications to the users E-mail is on. So, whenever users are added to a group, flow of notifications will be sent to their E-mail until they access their account to change the setting of notification to off. This flow of notifications which have been received in users E-mail could result in not knowing or not seeing some of important E-mails that come from teachers or colleagues. Missing these E-mails can affect students grade or cause failing the course. Another disadvantage of groups is the large number of people who are connected with the groups. In addition to the large number of groups that users follow. So, strange people could follow users post to collect information about them for suspicious activities. Disadvantages do not prevent having advantages of groups in Facebook. Following education groups such as the class group or the university group allows students to be updated with their classmate and their universities bulletins. Besides that, groups help students to exchange knowledge and information with those who share with them same talent or interest,

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which encourage them to improve themselves and being professional in their interest area. Also, groups can help students to find job because some of companies post bulletin in some specific universities groups to tell students that they want to hire employee from this specific university. Moreover, students can follow companies groups to be updated with companies available jobs. To sum up, Facebook is a reversible site which can hold disadvantages and advantages. Users can use Facebook ethically. However, those who do not use Facebook for suspect actions, cannot prevent criminal people from using Facebook and follow their actions, statues, or pictures. In addition to that, the available alternatives make using Facebook is unnecessary for students. But, nothing can compensate the damages that Facebook does such as sexual abuse or losing life. Also, the alternatives are more safety than Facebook. For instance, Google Wave is kind of emails that allow users to make a community inside the email and no one can see this community only the assigned people. Besides that, Google Wave makes discussing projects easier than Facebook with the features that it has such as responding to anyone under his/her comment directly. On the other hand, Facebook does not have this feature. Also, students can use Whatsapp, a mobile application, which allows students to create groups and uploading pictures or videos while only who are in the group or whom users send to can see the posts.

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Work Cited "Burglars using Facebook, Twitter to find targets-report." REUTERS . Thomson Reuters International Mnews Agency, 27 2009. Web. 01 Nov 2012. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/08/28/crime-internet-idUSSP49844920090828>. Bellis, Mary . "Who Invented Facebook?The history behind the number one social media network Facebook.." About.com Inventors. About.com. Web. 25 Nov 2012. <http://inventors.about.com/od/fstartinventions/a/Facebook.htm>. Choudhury, Shafi . "4 Disadvantages of Using Facebook." Knoji. Knoji, 24 2010. Web. 01 Nov 2012. <http://socialmedia.knoji.com/4-disadvantages-of-using-facebook/>. Daily Mail Reporter, . "Four nursing students expelled from university after posting pictures of themselves posing with a human placenta on Facebook." Mail Online News. dailymail, 03 2011. Web. 03 Nov 2012. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343628/4-nursingstudents-expelled-posting-Facebook-human-placenta-pictures.html>. Popkin, Helen . "Your Facebook profile: An open invite to crime?." msnbc. NBCNews, 19 2010. Web. 01 Nov 2012. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35466408/ns/technology_and_sciencetech_and_gadgets/t/your-facebook-profile-open-invite-crime/>. Rice, Alexandra . "Students Push Their Facebook Use Further Into Course Work." WIRED CAMPUS . The Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 2011. Web. Web. 30 Oct. 2012. <http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-push-their-facebook-use-further-intoacademics/33947>. Szalavitz, Maia . "Misery Has More Company Than You Think, Especially on Facebook." Health. Time Health & Family, 27 2011. Web. Web. 01 Nov. 2012. <http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/27/youre-not-alone-misery-has-more-companythan-you-think/>. "The Early Show." Perf. Maggi Rodriguez. Facebook "Friend" Suspected in Burglary. CBSnews.com: 25 2010. Web. 01 Nov 2012. <http://www.cbsnews.com/2100500202_162-6331796.html>. Zhethzuke , . "Facebook Status Can Act Crimes." Crime. Socyberty, 31 2012. Web. Web. 02 Nov. 2012. <http://socyberty.com/crime/facebook-status-can-act-crimes/>.

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