Is Facebok a Waste of Time?

Author’s Note: This is an essay that I wrote to meet my writing goals for my next conference.

Facebook is an online chat room that I think is a big waste of time. It was created in 2004, and since then, has had over 800 million active users! More and more people are getting accounts and therefore, spending more time on it. People are spending way too much time on this site, so now they just lose track of time talking to people they don't even know. Facebook, the online chat room, is not only a distracting website, but an addictive one too. People spend way too much time on this website.

When four men created this website in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2004, they probably didn't plan on it to have so much success. The men who created it were named; Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Mr. Zuckerberg was the man with the big idea in this story of creating this great success. As a job, he was a computer programmer and an internet entrepreneur. The other three guys, who helped Mark, were his classmates at Harvard University.

I think Facebook can be a good thing but a bad thing at the same time. The first reason I think of it as a bad thing is because people are spending WAY too much time on it. Although it may be fun to be on it, you don't need to be Face-booking for 3 hours, on average, every day. Even though there are lots of down-sides to this website, there can also be some up-sides. You could use it to post helpful thoughts to your friends saying productive things to help the environment, to help you, or to help others. Another purpose is that you also could have your co-workers create an account for business purposes only.

Facebook is wildly popular in the world with more than enough active users. Many Americans have accounts for this useful but extremely addicting website. To me this is just another insignificant fact, but at least seventy-one percent of all Americans have accounts. In some ways, Facebook is just like a really neat, new video game that you just got; it is a lot of fun for some people, and you never want to get off it until you absolutely have to. I'm just one of those very few people who think Facebook is a big waste of time. That is my opinion but yours may be different. Amazingly, some children that are 6 and even under have accounts. This can be especially dangerous for them because as a kid, everything is cool. They are still learning and they don't need another major distraction from the digital age to come into play.

For me, it is stunning how many people have Facebook accounts and how much time you spend on them. I am okay with people having accounts but I am not okay with them spending so much time on them. This is my opinion but others may think differently of this. They may be one of the seventy-one percent of users that can't get off the site.