Ways that Facebook Overkill is Damaging Internet Users

Dawn Hawkins
You can't escape FaceBook. The name is everywhere you look. It can sometimes feel as though you are being stalked by the FaceBook name. You see the FaceBook name in the sites that you visit because they all have a FaceBook "like" button. There are still a few sites that don't have anything about FaceBook on it, but you will find it hard put to find them. FaceBook may have become too popular for a person's own good. FaceBook has become overkill on the internet and people continue to fall into the same pattern. That is a good thing to a certain extent, but it can be damaging as well.

Ways that FaceBook Overkill is Damaging to Internet Users:

Monopoly- FaceBook seems to have a monopoly on the social networking front. There are few sites that still compete with it and those that do don't have nearly the same success with social networking as FaceBook does. Monopolies on any type of business are very dangerous for the consumer. That is why it is an illegal practice. When a company begins to become a monopoly, it feels that it can do whatever it wants without the worry that "customers" will look elsewhere to get the product that they want. Although it is true there are other social networking sites available, FaceBook seems to have taken over the internet in ways that may not be healthy for the people who frequent it.

Reliable Information- You can get a lot of reliable information from other users on FaceBook. You can also get very poor information from them as well. The unfortunate part of one social networking site being to large is that it doesn't encourage users to spread their wings at all. There is nothing outside of the social networking site. Many people won't look outside of that source in order to get the information that tells whether something is legitimate or not. Many people take what is said on FaceBook as the truth. Not bothering to find out is something is true can be damaging to internet users because they may not make certain that the information received on the social networking site is real or not.

Stuck- People tend to get stuck using the one social networking site even if they don't like it. They could go elsewhere, but since FaceBook is where everyone is at, it makes it hard for people to leave the site even if they don't like it. It's a catch 22 for the user because it is nearly impossible to do anything on the internet today without FaceBook being a part of it. This leaves a lot of people stuck using a site that they don't really like. That isn't to say that people don't like FaceBook, it is just the fact that many people joined FaceBook for the simple fact that the people they knew were on it.

Familiarity- Users of FaceBook have become so familiar with things that they forget they shouldn't post their entire lives on the internet. Being too familiar means that we share information on these social networking sites that we wouldn't share even in our real lives. FaceBook overkill has made us believe that we are invincible on this site. We tend to forget how we should behave in public places and FaceBook is definitely a public place.

FaceBook is definitely a presence on the internet that you can't ignore. It is right there in front of your face every time you log onto the internet. No matter what website you visit, you are likely to run across something that has to do with FaceBook. It is a great thing that someone could make such a huge hit out of this type of networking. The problem is, whether you are a business or a person looking for something to do on the internet, you almost have to use FaceBook social networking site in order to make yourself known on the internet. That makes the FaceBook overkill damaging to internet users.

Published by Dawn Hawkins

I am a freelance writer who has been working from home for two years writing for online communities. I previously worked in the accounting department in a corporate office. It was a very long commute and the...  View profile

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  • Gabriella1/27/2011

    I used to use Facebook more in the past but I get tired of seeing it everywhere, i just saw what looked liked a Facebook page in an ad for an Adam Sadler and Jennifer Aniston movie, which I'll pass on one because of Facebook and two because Jennifer Aniston seems to be stuck playing Rachel in all her films. Facebook is way to over exposed.

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