Kazaferovic 1

Facebook and its effect on teens

Social networking sites are one of the most popular trends of todays world. From MySpace to Zenga to Facebook, almost everyone has one. As stated on ITProPortal Analyst firm In-stat has calculated that well over 10 billion social networking and online world accounts have been created by the end of 2010 with nearly half of them still active. A social network site is a site designed for a person to meet new people or to reconnect and establish communications with old friends and family members. Most social networks started off in high schools and universities and were meant to be students only. Over time the social networks expanded to the open public. As more and more people joined, they recommended it to their family and friends and social networking sites grew. Each social networking site had an up rise and later fell due to a newer and more attractive social network website. Zenga one of the first networking sites subdued to MySpace because MySpace allowed profile customization and was simpler to use than Zenga. Then MySpace fell to Facebook because of simplicity. MySpace didnt really know how a social networking site is supposed to look like, so they let the users decide by letting them design the background, music and where everything went. That own feature led to the downfall of MySpace. People came to MySpace with connecting and talking to people in mind, but found themselves more in finding out where everything is and focusing on the visual aspect of the site than the communication features. Facebook learned from MySpace mistakes, took over and leads the social networking sites today. Now in 2011 a new

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social networking site created by Google called GooglePlus seems promising and offering more features than Facebook, which it is only a matter of time that Facebook, the most popular and used networking site today will fall and subdue to a newer social networking site, just like its predecessors and competition. Facebook is one of the top 5 websites in the world and dominates the cyber world today. Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, originally wrote Facemash, which is the predecessor to Facebook on October 28th in 2003. His original plan was to make a site like hot or not, which compared two girls photos and users would choose the hotter choice. Mark Zuckerburg went to extreme lengths to have a site superior to hotornot.com. He hacked into Harvards computer network and stole id pictures from every girl in Harvard. It became such a success that Mark received over 22,000 visitors in just the first four hours of its creation. With such popularity it was only a matter of time before the administrators of Harvard would find out. A few days later, he was caught and charged with violating individual privacy, hacking into the Harvard system, and violating copyright laws. With these charges, Mark Zuckerburg could have been easily expelled from Harvard University. Luckily, the charges against him were dropped and he was let go. After the events, one would think that Mark would learn from his mistakes and quit what he was doing, but that wasnt the case for him. Instead Mark saw that

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the site he created was a huge success and decided to continue on his project and even to expand it. The following semester, Mark created another website were students from his art class could share their notes and use the site as an online study guide and tool for their art history final. After the final, Mark read an article in The Harvard Crimson, about the incident with Facemash. It inspired him immediately and he began to code a script for a new site. On February 4th 2004, Mark created and launched a website and named it thefacebook. After the creation of the new founded site, he was immediately harassed and faced with trouble just like the creation of the first website. Three Harvard Seniors; Tyler Winklevoss, Divya Narendra and Cameron Winklevoss accused Zuckerberg of stealing their ideas for an intended social network website called HarvardConnection, and of using their ideas for a competing website which Mark called TheFacebook.The case wasnt settled in court, but outside of court on personal matters. Once the legal problems were over Mark Zuckerburg continued working on his website. At first Mark only made the new social website for Harvard Students, but he had a better idea in mind and that was to expand. With a big picture in mind, Mark needed to assemble a team. He got his fellow friends and classmates; Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Dustin Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes. Eduardo worked on business, Dustin Moskovitz worked as a programmer, Andrew McCollum as a graphic artist, and Chris Hughes helped out.

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With a team, expansion came easy for Mark. Slowly, membership to the site, thefacebook, expanded to other big named Universities like, Boston University, MIT, NYU and then later to other universities in United States and Canada. In 2004 thefacebook became a corporation and a man named Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, became the companys president and investor. A month later the corporation received its first investment from the co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel. With money coming in, a year later, in 2005 the company changed its domain name from thefacebook.com to just Facebook.com for the cost of $200,000. That same year, Mark Zuckerburg opened a high school version of Facebook for young teens. Although it was released for high school students, an invitation was needed. Then a year later on September 26 th 2006, the site was made public to everyone ages 13 and older. Since 2006, Facebook grew dramatically. Both its revenue and popularity grew. In 2009 Facebook finally exceeded its competing rival MySpace and became the most used and active social networking website in the world with over 100 million users. Facebook became one of the leading popular sites in only short amount of time and attracted millions of users each year since. Like a drug, any user trying Facebook for the first time, instantly gets hooked and addicted, coming back and visiting the site each day, especially teens. Teens all around the world switched over from other social networking sites to Facebook. As they joined, they recommended it to other friends and became instantly the new trend.

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Like all great accomplishments, there comes the bad with the good. Facebook has made a positive impact in many teenagers. They reconnected with long lost friends, keep in contact with current friends and make new friends all on one site. The dark side of Facebook is what many people dont see, and thats cyber-bullying. Cyber bullying is the electronic posting of mean-spirited messages about a person (as a student) often done anonymously. It is basically bullying or harassing someone over the internet via email, chat, instant messaging, cell phones and the newest one; social networking site. Cyber bullying over social networking sites has risen due to the popularity of those sites, such as Facebook. Teenagers made up around 20% of the Facebook population in 20101, which may seem like a small percent, but in reality, that is 26 million users between the ages of 13 and 17 and all 26 million are at risk of being cyber-bullied. Every teen can easily log in and make post and comments publically to all their friends, which makes Facebook a catalyst for rumors and gossips. With rumors starting, cyber-bullying comes easy. Since 2009 there were numerous cases of cyber-bullying teens on Facebook. On August 20th 2009, according to MailOnline, the first serious case of cyber-bullying on Facebook occurred in England. Keeley Houghton posted a death threat of the victim, Emily
Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report 2010 145% Growth in 1 Year,istrategylabs, www.istrategylabs.com/2010/01/facebook-demographics-andstatistics-report-2010-145-growth-in-1-year/
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Kazaferovic 6 Moore, on Facebook. Keeley posted on her own Facebook wall Keeley is going to murder the bitch. She is an actress. What a ******* liberty. Emily ****head Moore. This all started two days ago in a pub, when Keeley came up to Emily and asked her if she can have a huggle. Emily replied, saying to leave her alone or she will call the police. Keeley then told Emily that she will give her a reason to call the police. The incident was settled in court, and Keeley was found guilty of cyber-bullying. She was sentenced to three months in prison and a restraining order was placed on her from contacting Emily in person or on the web for the next five years. This was the first case where a person was sentenced to prison for bullying through the usage of the internet. In January of 2010, a young teenager named Phoebe Prince committed suicide after a bunch of classmates from her high school bullied her over Facebook. According to the Boston Globe; The bullying included disagreements over teen romances at school, school officials said. And it continued with taunting text messages and harassing postings on Facebook, the popular social networking site. Another case of cyber-bullying over Facebook happened this year. Two 16 year old girls created a fake boyfriend for a young 15 year old girl whose names were not mentioned. The two girls created a fake Facebook profile and named the fake person Jaydon Rothwell. For three months the young girl believed she had an online boyfriend that she slowly met and got to know over Facebook. After three months, Jaydon Rothwell got into an argument with her

Kazaferovic 7 and she broke up with him. A final post was left on his wall, stating that he had killed himself because of her. The two 16 year olds, took it a step further by making a fake Facebook paged called RIP Jaydon Rothwell which attracted 2,000 members and each blaming the 15 year old for the suicide. It was so deceitful that it not only made the 15 year old believe she actually did it, but the Facebook community that knew about it as well. The 15 year old managed to take abusive and threating phone calls, texts and messages as other teenagers, unaware it was a hoax, joined in. Finally she had enough and called in the police, which then sorted everything out. When asked later, after the incident on how she fell for such a devious plan, she told officers that she was introduced to a boy she was told was Jaydon. She had been drinking with friends in a park and it was dark, and as the boy looked similar to the Facebook picture they kissed and she went home feeling delighted. When the police checked the records, Jaydon Rothwell never existed. Only then did she finally know the truth. These are just a few cases of many that cyber-bullying occurs on Facebook and teens are not aware of the dangers the site provides. According to Costumer Report Survey conducted in the US in early 2011,One million children were harassed, threatened or subjected to other forms of cyber bullying on Facebook in the past year! These cases range from dangerous to even extreme, where victims committed suicide because of the enormous pressure, these bullies give to them. Facebook has taken measures to stop bullying, such as modifying the privacy settings on

Kazaferovic 8 profiles. A new feature they have included is if a user wishes to add a friend, they must know each other through someone else, or a common friend. If a person does not know someone who sent them a friends quest, can easily report them directly to Facebook by just a click of a button. Facebook has been also accused by the Federal Government of the United States, stating that Facebook has engaging in unfair and deceptive practices. According to the NY times, the Federal Government has announced a broad settlement that requires the company to respect the privacy wishes of its users and subjects it to regular privacy audits for the next 20 years. No longer can advertisers take private information off of someones profile unless consented by the user. These are all necessary steps taken to protect the privacy of not just teens on Facebook, but to try to prevent any bullying from happening in the near future again. Teens today enjoy Facebook as a mean to communicate and reconnect with new and old friends respectively, but as long as these innocent teen victims exist, so will cyber-bullies and we must insure the safety of each and every user on Facebook from them, as cases have proven, the results can be fatal.

Facebook and Teens By Almir Kazaferovic

Senior Paper 12/3/11

Outline:

Thesis: Cyber bullying on a social networking site such as Facebook has become a bigger problem than people think.

I. What is a Social Networking Site II. Origin and Creation of Facebook a. Mark Zuckerberg b. Facebook Predecessor c. Development into most popular site III. Facebook becomes popular a. Teens start to use it and makes it popular b. Popularity attracts unwanted attention IV. Cyber bullying a. What is Cyber bullying b. How cyber bullying affects teens on Facebook V. Cases of Cyber Bullying on Facebook. a. Emily Moore case. b. Phoebe Prince case c. Jaydon Rothwell case. VI. Facebook taking countermeasures a. Changing privacy policy settings b. USA Government new law over Facebook

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