Sources

Christofides, E., Muise, A. & Desmarais, S. (2009). Information disclosure and control on Facebook: Are they two sides of the same coin or two different processes? CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(3): 341-345. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2008.0226

Displayed interesting statistics and information about who uses Facebook and the social impact that they receive from it.

Bugeja, M. J. (2006). Facing the Facebook. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 21(52), C1. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from

http://vpss.ku.edu/pdf/PSDC%20Facing%20the%20Facebook.pdf

Shows some flaws in the privacy within Facebook with how much you post and drama that can occur between ‘friends.’

Hawn, C. (2009). Take two aspirin and tweet me in the morning: How Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are reshaping health care. Health Affairs, 28(2), 261-368. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/28/2/361.full.pdf

Revealed hidden uses that Facebook probably didn’t intend, for example, use in the medical community and the legal issues of privacy.

Castro, D. (2010). Facebook is not the enemy. The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Retrieved September 25, 2011, from

http://www.itif.org/publications/facebook-not-enemy

Directs the anger and paranoia of Facebook users concerned with privacy from Facebook itself to the web sites that buy their service.

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4(12), 1143-1168. Retrieved September 25, 2011, from

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x/full

Revealed the social benefits of having Facebook and our interaction with other users.

Acquisti, A., Gross, R. (2006). Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006 (4258), 36-58. Retrieved September 25, 2011, from

http://www.springerlink.com/content/gx00n8nh88252822/fulltext.pdf

Compared other social media sites to Facebook and the various IT benefits.

Perez, S. (2011). Facebook confirms hiring famous iPhone and Sony hacker, GeoHot (George Hotz). Read Write Web. Retrieved September 30, 2011, from

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ facebook_hires_famous_iphone_and_sony_hacker_geohot_george_hotz.php

News article mentioning the new employee at Facebook.

Conclusion

Facebook has also seen some criticism from teachers and classrooms as it is seen as a distraction. Many students are members of groups that read “Addicted to Facebook”, as well as other variations [2]. University students are almost, if not, required to own a laptop in 2011. This boasts a change in focus from textbooks to online resources for research and studying led by modern information technology. Michael Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado, recounts a class  discussion during which he asked how many people had seen the previous night's NewsHour on PBS or read that day's New York Times. "A couple of hands went up out of about 140 students who were present," he recalls. "One student chirped: 'Ask them how many use Facebook.' I did. Every hand in the room went up. She then said: 'Ask them how many used it today.' I did. Every hand in the room went up. I was amazed” [2].

This level of use in the classroom led many universities to restrict access to the Internet in the classrooms to ban Facebook as a distraction. Other reactions include barring the use of laptops in general. Campus-wide bans on Facebook are rare but have been put in place for security reasons [2]. Those restrictions do little to limit the use of Facebook out of class, but the teachers do what they can to keep students focused and learning in the classroom.

It is undeniable that Facebook has changed the way that millions of people interact with each other online and offline. New friendships can be formed via the website as well as strengthen current ones. The various ways users can communicate are staggering, such as Facebook chatting, wall to wall conversations, private messaging, and status updates. But Facebook’s social impact is off the web site as well. In 2010, the film The Social Network was released to widespread critical acclaim and box office success.

The Social Network follows young Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, through the creation of the site and the influence it has on his business partners. Two of which sue him for allegedly stealing the idea for the website, while Mark is juggling trying to save his friendship with one of the creators. The film gave viewers a look into what the potential for current information technology has to offer and letting viewers know the challenges the creators had to go through to create such an important and massive website.

The website defied even the farthest reaching expectations of the creators and brought new interest towards the occupation of being a software engineer and information technologies in general. In mid 2011, famed hacker of the iPhone and PS3, George Hotz, was hired to Facebook because of his extensive computer cracking skills [7]. This interest in information technology has created careers for many people and Facebook is many of the job opportunities.

Cultural Impact

Facebook has also seen some criticism from teachers and classrooms as it is seen as a distraction. Many students are members of groups that read “Addicted to Facebook”, as well as other variations [2]. University students are almost, if not, required to own a laptop in 2011. This boasts a change in focus from textbooks to online resources for research and studying led by modern information technology. Michael Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado, recounts a class  discussion during which he asked how many people had seen the previous night's NewsHour on PBS or read that day's New York Times. "A couple of hands went up out of about 140 students who were present," he recalls. "One student chirped: 'Ask them how many use Facebook.' I did. Every hand in the room went up. She then said: 'Ask them how many used it today.' I did. Every hand in the room went up. I was amazed” [2].

This level of use in the classroom led many universities to restrict access to the Internet in the classrooms to ban Facebook as a distraction. Other reactions include barring the use of laptops in general. Campus-wide bans on Facebook are rare but have been put in place for security reasons [2]. Those restrictions do little to limit the use of Facebook out of class, but the teachers do what they can to keep students focused and learning in the classroom.

It is undeniable that Facebook has changed the way that millions of people interact with each other online and offline. New friendships can be formed via the website as well as strengthen current ones. The various ways users can communicate are staggering, such as Facebook chatting, wall to wall conversations, private messaging, and status updates. But Facebook’s social impact is off the web site as well. In 2010, the film The Social Network was released to widespread critical acclaim and box office success.

The Social Network follows young Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, through the creation of the site and the influence it has on his business partners. Two of which sue him for allegedly stealing the idea for the website, while Mark is juggling trying to save his friendship with one of the creators. The film gave viewers a look into what the potential for current information technology has to offer and letting viewers know the challenges the creators had to go through to create such an important and massive website.

The website defied even the farthest reaching expectations of the creators and brought new interest towards the occupation of being a software engineer and information technologies in general. In mid 2011, famed hacker of the iPhone and PS3, George Hotz, was hired to Facebook because of his extensive computer cracking skills [7]. This interest in information technology has created careers for many people and Facebook is many of the job opportunities.

Legal and Ethical Issues

Information technology does come with one major flaw that software programmers and online products must overcome: releasing too much privacy. Facebook has an interesting situation though, users reveal as much about themselves as they want on their profiles, and it is not an issue of the web site accidentally revealing information to other companies for a profit [4]. Since the growth of its user base, Facebook has implemented many new privacy options into its core layout on user’s profile pages, but from a study done on 343 university students from Ontario, Canada, most users were not willing to sacrifice their popularity online for strict privacy settings.  [1]. “This methodological distinction may explain why individuals in our study who had higher self-esteem scores also reported that they would be more likely to use the Facebook privacy settings. Those with higher self-esteem may have less need for the input of others into their self-construction,” says Emily Christofides, M.Sc., Amy Muise, M.Sc., and Serge Desmarais, Ph. [1]. They have also concluded that maturity of the user plays an important role in the amount of privacy that is displayed on a user’s profile. The researchers admit that if the study was done on a slightly older demographic, the results may have been skewed more towards the need for privacy other than popularity with the amount of information that was disclosed.

Potential Benefits

Humans value communication over almost everything else. The psychological need for interaction with others is healthy and very easily accessed via Facebook. The web site has forever changed the way people can be addicted to the Internet and the way content can be shared. Not only can new friendships be made from the people that you can meet online, but friendships can become stronger with the multitude of ways that communication can be had between the ‘friends’ on Facebook.

The implementations reach much farther than a consumer level website for social communication. For example, family physician Ted Eytan says, 

“Although health care may be one of America’s leading industries in terms of size and scope, it’s been among the slowest to embrace advances in communications and information technology (IT). But along with EHRs and other IT systems, so-called social media tools are becoming a presence in health care at last—and transforming it in the process”[3].

He promotes being ‘friends’ with patient’s doctors and physicians for quick communication for questions or emergencies. General practitioners can post blogs and compare care options for patients online and quickly. Health care author Carleen Hawn states that even in beleaguered economic times, investors are taking notice. And according to DowJones Venture One, which tracks venture capital investments in technology startups, nearly $900 million was invested in software and technology services focused on health care in 2007, the latest year for which data are available [3]. It is obvious that hospitals and doctors foresee the promise in not only Facebook, but also various online social mediums to benefit their practice and create a convenience for patients to get their care when they need it most.

Background

In popular culture, Facebook has since been a part of more than 800 million user’s social lives and is expected to hit one billion by 2012 [5]. From the site first going online in 2004, it has grown and developed from a simple user’s page with information that was revealed based on how much they were willing to reveal to a form of lifestyle, with users constantly checking status updates on their mobile phones or nearby laptops multiple times a day [5].

Facebook originally was only open to college or university students with a valid college email address but a year later was opened to high schools [5]. This was later criticized briefly for the privacy concerns based on a lack of checking if the users were, in reality, high school students. Over the course of several years, Facebook’s rapid growth via word-of-mouth brought the implementation of new user features like the “like” button, “poking”, and Facebook chatting. “Liking” things on Facebook is one of the most popular features, eventually being implemented in other websites linked to Facebook as a way of advertising and revealing what a user was doing while off of Facebook [3].

Introduction

Technology is universal, it affects every aspect of our lives whether we like it or not. It can be argued that technology began with the first tool man used. Over time, the word technology was associated with products that haven’t discovered their full potential, as well as the lack of explanation for consumers as to how they work. Information technology is extremely integral to next generation web technologies and modern modes of communication. This covers anything and everything from cell phones to computers to online video games. The impact that information technology has on us everyday can easily be taken for granted.

One of the greatest creations and miracles of modern and information technology is the Internet. Consumerist America finally went online around the late 1990‘s and to this day, the Internet is the most important medium for media. But not only for media is it crucial to the existence of the Internet, but social networking became popular around the early 2000s. Web sites like Friendster and methods of expression like blogging provided demand for more options which MySpace picked up [6]. Eventually the popularity of revealing private information about yourself to friends and family gained more popularity, resulting in the formation of Facebook.