Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Facebook

There are many different forms of social media available today and each different form can provide different opportunities for the user. However, Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform in the world. With an estimated 2 billion users at the end of 2017, nearly 1/5 of the world’s population is on Facebook. Not only can individuals use Facebook to connect with others around the world, but businesses can use the site to market new products and reach out to potential customers. There are several key advantages and disadvantages to using Facebook and it is important that users know how to take advantage of these to get the most out of their use on the site.

One of the biggest advantages of using Facebook is the ease of searchability on the site. Facebook incorporates a high-powered search engine on the site that makes it very easy for users to locate other individuals on the site. Unlike other social media platforms, there are no funky-user names so as long as you know someone’s first and last name you have a very good chance of finding their profile. The same concept applies to locate business pages on Facebook if you know the name of a business all you have to do is search for that exact name and you should be able to find the page associated with the business. You can even search for groups on Facebook making it easy for users to come together around a common cause, issue or activity, or any other area of interest. 

Another big advantage of using Facebook is the freedom users have when creating their posts. Facebook recently updated its status limit to 63,206 characters, giving the users plenty of space to get there point across without the pressures of a tight character field. This is a key difference Facebook has over other social media sites such as Twitter, which has a limit of 280 characters per post. Facebook offers this same level of flexibility and freedom when uploading photos, making it one of the most popular photo sharing websites on the internet. You can post multiple pictures at once to a single status, or create an album if you want to upload a substantial number of photos. Facebook allows users to tag other users and locations in photos, making it easier for others to find the photos once you have posted them.

The biggest disadvantage of using Facebook today is the lack of privacy users experience while using the site. Not only can you find more information about someone through their Facebook page than you could through talking to them directly, but Facebook also reserves the right to use any of the information offered by users for content curation and personalized advertisement generation. Many users view the latter as an invasion of their privacy and have become quite upset with Facebook and its use of personal information. Unfortunately, this is something everyone agrees to as part of the terms and conditions required by Facebook and there is really nothing users can do about it. However, users can control the amount of information available to other users by adjusting their privacy settings and being very mindful of which information they decide to share.