Monday, 3 November 2014

FACEBOOK, USE IT WISELY OR IT KILLS YOU!



Internet has been popularly used in 1990s. Since then, the user of internet has been growing bigger and bigger year to year. Now, internet can be accessed everywhere and it is no longer a “new” thing for people living in the isolated are such a village for now the internet access has been applied there. The easiness become easier as now we do not need a big and heavy computer anymore to access it. Just a small thing called smartphone in your hand, now you can know everything happened around the world through internet. Internet offers us a lot of features to be accessed such as news, video, music, social media, and many more. One of those features that has been mostly accessed now is social media. Connecting to people through internet is now become a social trend. It seems that at least one person has to have one social media account. Types of social media itself now is vary from Twitter, Facebook, BlogSpot, Blackberry Messenger, Path, Instagram and et cetera. Facebook, then, becomes one of the most-used social media by internet user. At first, people use Facebook as a media of communication to their friends but now, the purpose is extended. Now, you can do more on Facebook. You can play games, you can send files and video, or even you can do some business through it. Alas, behind those easiness that is offered by Facebook to its users, there are some of issues on Facebook that have a potential to endanger its user lives. Those dangers can attacks to its user indiscriminately.

In 2012 in a home in British Columbia, it was found a dead body of a girl. That dead body later is identified as Amanda Todd. A girls whose age is 15, then become an international sensation. Why? It is not because her decision to commit suicide but because her video that she made before she committed suicide. Before she killed herself, she made a video of herself holding bunch of paper that has been written. In those papers, she wrote the reason why she committed suicide. Then, it is know that she committed suicide because someone had posted her topless photo in Facebook and tagged it to other Amanda’s friends in the Facebook. Seeing those naked picture, then her friends at school kept away from her. Amanda, the according to her video, felt the she didn’t have friend anymore. Situation become worse, when some of friends in school turned to bully her. Felling stressed and pressured, Amanda then decided to ends her life. 


Then, what is the relation between Amanda Todd’s suicide with Facebook? Something that must be emphasized here that Amanda Todd lost her life because her privacy life is “tampered” in Facebook. Privacy has been an issue on Facebook. Some people claims that we cannot save our privacy safely on Facebook. Let’s take an instance, one day your Facebook friend posts a photo of you that you are very embarrassed with in Facebook. Then, your friend tagged your name in that photo along with your other friends and your friend give a bad comment on that photo. In that situation, you may be able to remove your tag on that photo, but how about your other friends’ tags? Then, if you are lucky enough, you may be able to complain to Facebook teams, which it will take a longtime to remove that photo from Facebook. But, how if your friends have saved your photo. Remember, once a photo goes viral in Internet, you cannot control it!

Amanda Todd is not the only criminal case related to Facebook. In Indonesia, a teenage girl whose age is 14 years was being kidnapped by someone she just met. The girl knew the man from Facebook as the man sent her a friend request and she accepted it. Then, the conversation happened between the girl and the man. They finally decided to meet at a mall and as they met the man took the girl to a house and he make the girl slept by giving her a sleep pill. The man then rapped her before finally sold her to Batam as a prostitute.

As we concern here, the problem happened in this case is because the girl accepted the friend request from someone she didn’t know and it is being worsen as she made a deeper conversation to him Sometimes young people are interested to those who look attractive and fancy. It, then, is used as a way to trap teenager. They made a Facebook account, then they put some of attractive profile picture that it may be not their face. Then, they send a friend request to the victim. 

Fortunately, besides those terrible effects of using Facebook in our life, Facebook also offers its easiness for its users in connecting to other people. Facebook can facilitates people to reconnect with their old friends. Sometimes, users on Facebook do not know whether their old friend have already had a Facebook account or not but Facebook has a feature called “friend suggestion” that more or less helps people to find their friend on Facebook.

Moreover, Facebook also offers a free and unlimited message. On Facebook messenger, we can send millions of messages which is free. We pay nothing for sending those message except the internet data which is extremely cheaper than traditional message service on internet. Also, it is not only a short message that Facebook offers in its messenger, it enable us to send picture, voice note, and video too.

Recently, many people have used Facebook as a media of its business especially on selling something. Now, on Facebook you can make your own group.  The group can be managed for various purpose and some people use it as a selling-something group. There are group on Facebook which sells books, clothes, shoes, and many more. The owner of those group then invites their friend to the group and the invited friends also invite their friend and it continues in that way. As the member of the group grows up, the possibility to sell the product is also growing.
According to the explanation above, we can see that Facebook offers us some of benefit and easiness that can help us in some aspect in our life like finding old friend, sending cheap message, or doing business. In the other way, if it is used recklessly, Facebook can be a tool that endanger our life and even can kill us. Thus, using it as wise as possible is the best way to do. Not exposing our privacy life too much Facebook and not adding or accepting a request from unknown account can help us to avoid dangers.



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