During the first round of the Each One Teach One group projects in Media Law and Literacy one of the technologies that one of my peers researched and reported on was Facebook. This social platform was invented in 2003 by Mark Zuckerberg. I learned that the original purpose of the site was for Harvard students exclusively to rate the attractiveness of others as well as getting in touch with students. Once the popularity of the platform grew, access to the site also grew, becoming available to other university students, then developing to include high schoolers, until it became accessible to the general public, with the minimum age requirement being 13 years old.
Facebook has continued to add new features and abilities as time has passed and technology has developed. Initially, users could post photos, send invites, block, friend, or unfriend other users, and report their personal information, such as their relationship status, where they are from and live, where they were educated, etc. Another thing I learned is that Facebook Marketplace, a subsection of the site where people can buy and sell merchandise, was introduced in 2007. I was surprised to find out that the Chat feature of Facebook was not introduced until 2008, because this is what I associate the platform with most as when I was young this was the primary way I “chatted” with family members and friends. Something that I was not surprised to find out is the fact that between the years 2010-2019, Facebook was the most downloaded app as well as the first social platform to exceed 1 billion accounts. The fact that Facebook is the largest and most widespread app in the world was surprising but not completely shocking.
You cannot cover the impact that this platform has had without looking at both the positive and negative. First of all, Facebook was one of the very first social networks and set the stage for the development of social media that we have seen in the past 2 decades. On the flip side, Facebook is no stranger to the damaging effects of social media. For example, fake news can be shared as the truth, troll accounts exist and purposely drag others down, and of course, the intense privacy issue the company has faced in the current years makes everyone question the current purpose of the site.
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