FACEBOOK

Social Media Institution

by Tin Ly

I. Introduction
Facebook is the most used social networking website that connects about two
billion people from all over the world.
Facebook provides many free tools and features for its users such as messaging,
video calling, and sharing in order to make a better place for socialization.
It is also a place with tons of news,
information, and entertainments.

II. The emergence of Facebook

A. From Harvard University to worldwide

Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates first created

Facebook in January, 2004 as a social tool for the students in
Harvard University to share and exchange their opinions and
ideas.
It later spread to other Ivy League schools, then the whole
nation., and finally the world in September, 2006 due to its
friendly and convenient interface, without any adult or sexual
content.
With Facebook, many friends, families, and strangers can
freely communicate and socialize with others despite the facts
that they are not close to each other.

B. Major participants
When it was first created in Harvard University, Facebook was
originally intended for only the students there, with only a
thousand users.
However, after a few years, it is now expanded to 1.65 billion
monthly active users around the world, including people of
different races, social status, and religions, which make it a diverse
place for people to share and exchange almost everything.
It has become a daily behavior for
people to use Facebook 1 to 2 hours a day.

C. How has Facebook changed over

time?
Back then, Facebook did not have any
mobile app, and you could only share
your pictures, videos, status publicly.

Later on, after year by year, Facebook

has created mobile app, real-time News
Feed to keep people up-to-date with the
world news, more privacy for its users,
Live feature, Facebook Messenger and
Video Call for more socializing
convenience, etc.
Mark Zuckerbergs plan in the future is
to bring Facebook to the whole world by
providing many poor countries the
Internet and donating most of his net

D. The causes to change are

Because in the busy world we dont have any more time to socialize
with friends or family who live far away from us, Facebook plays as a
convenient tool for us to socialize with friends and families while we
can have time to do other things.
Due to the raise of other social media apps, Facebook needs to keep
up and invent new tools to stand on the top of the market.

Despite the facts that Facebook keep adding new things and having
more ads for more money, it still contain old features with daily
updates in order to make it appropriate for both old and new users.

III. Perceptions from

American society and
Facebooks members

To the Facebook users itself, it helps to

connect them with their friends and families
from all over the world. However, the
society views it in a more negative way
For the people who never uses Facebook or
not depend on it a lot, they view that our
social friendship and any other things will be
badly affected due to the times we spend on
the mobile or computer screens instead of
hanging out face-to-face like the past. There
is no real relationship anymore, instead we
were falling deeply into the virtual world and
causes separation in real life. The meaning
of relationship is not meaningful anymore.

IV. Sociological
perspectives on Facebook
A. Functionalist Perspective

. Each person in Facebook follows and connects with others in order to

further their development as an individual, as well as contribute to the
society.
. In Facebook, each person plays an important role in order to make it a
functional society, such as commenters with different opinions and ideas
who make it a place full of diverse information for people to learn and
exchange, posters who create a place for other people to comment,
reporters who report anything affect other peoples feelings and religions.
Its exactly the same as our society.
. The scammers, cyberbullies, and stalkers are just the dysfunctional parts of
this society.

B. Conflict perspective
Facebook is ruled by those with more followers and likes,
especially the celebrities, just like our real life world. The ones
with a lot of money and power are usually on this list.
While people with more followers and likes continue to gain more
popularity as their contents continue to be ever far reaching and
shaping most of our thinking and beliefs, people with less
followers who usually are normal people, become lost in the blur
of the rest of those with names.
These normal peoples beliefs and opinions are not the same as
those with more followers and likes. Facebook is exactly an
example of our real life world, the only difference is that it is
virtual with no face-to-face meeting.

D. Conclusion

Since it has been played an important role in our society, I believe that
there is no way to improve Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has done such
a good job on creating and updating the features of Facebook.
However, if there could be a feature that would minimize the addiction
of Facebook, that would make it better.
Instead of facing the computer or mobile screens for a long time to
socialize, it would be better to spend some time to socialize with our
friends and have some real relationship, and makes it more meaningful
and last longer instead of easily losing touch with each other.
Here is an emotion video that is basically summed up
what social media addiction has done to our world
right now.

E. References (MLA Format)

Facebook. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Web. 12 July 2016.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook>

Rao, Vicky Singh. 10 Reasons: Why is Facebook so popular and successful?

TechNotification.com, 14 January 2015. Web. 18 July 2016.
<https://www.technotification.com/2015/01/why-facebook-is-so-popular.html>
Bloomberg. Mark Zuckerbergs World-Wide Plan for the Internet.Youtube, 21 August 2013.
Web. 18 July 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwkZoPFOhXo>
Patkar, Mihir. 6 New Features and Changes to Facebook You Should Know. MakeUseOf, 22 July
2015. Web. 18 July 2016. <http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-new-features-changes-facebookknow/>
Mullins, Jenna. This is how Facebook has changed over the past 12 years. E!News, 4 February
2016. Web. 18 July 2016. <http://www.eonline.com/news/736769/this-is-how-facebook-haschanged-over-the-past-12-years>
Goel, Vindu, and Wingfield, Nick. Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Donate 99% of his Facebook shares
for charity. The New York Times, 1 December 2015. Web. 18 July 2016.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/technology/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-charity.html?
_r=0>
Gross, Doug. <5 ways Facebook changed us, for better and worse. CNN, 31 January 2014. Web.
18 July 2016. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/31/tech/social-media/facebook-changes/>
Prince Ea. <Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?> Youtube, 29 September 2014. Web. 18 July 2016.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl8EIhrQjQ>