Dabin Lee / 201521618

May 25, 2016

Essay 2
Prof. Vincent Gilhooley
Cause-Effect Essay
Have you ever felt that you are a Facebook addict? Nowadays, as the number of
smart phone users increases rapidly, the number of Social Network Services users throughout
the whole world increases accordingly. Facebook is one of the famous Social Network
Services that people use every day. A Person using Facebook can be related with
acquaintances and various people all over the world. However, using Facebook has pros and
cons. Facebook connects people and helps them maintain their friendship but there are some
negative aspects of its overusing. People should be aware of effects of overusing Facebook.
The first negative effect of overusing Facebook is comparing. Only good things are
not happening in peoples lives. However, most of people post positive things on their
Facebook. Facebook users can look up others daily life on Facebook regardless of their will.
In addition, all human beings intend to compare themselves with others. Festingers social
comparison theory explains that people have fundamental desire to evaluate their opinion and
ability and are used to comparing with others when there are not objective methods of
measurement. There are two types of comparison, the first is the downward comparison that
means people compare themselves with inferiors and the second is the upward comparison
that means people compare themselves with superior. (Yang, Kim, Seo 5) It is a matter if
people always do upward comparison, which makes them unhappy. Whenever people look up
others happy life, they keep thinking they are living unfortunate lives and making
themselves smaller.
The second one is that personal privacy can blow up. Some people are not concerned

about their privacy and keep their profile on the public setting. This might provide personal
information to people besides friends. Nevertheless, people cannot notice that their personal
information is drained to strangers easily. In addition, there is a face recognition function on
Facebook so this can tag Facebook friends automatically. (Kim 1) Facebook also creates a
picture sharing application named Moments which classifies pictures according to person and
time when pictures were taken. It can lead that someone can know where they went, what
they did and who they were with. For this reason, the Europe Union and Canadian
government make objections to this applications function because of invasion of users
privacy. Facebook get rid of this function in Europe countries and Canada finally. (Kwon 1)
Moreover, Facebook shows adjusted advertisements to their users. They look similar to
postings of friends or following pages, so Facebook users do not feel inconvenience really.
Those advertisements appear on Facebook which are based on someones friend clicks like
for them or they are similar interest to someones following pages. Facebook can perceive
and collect peoples interest through various ways without permission.
The third one is that people waste much time to use Facebook and cannot have
personal time. The number of Korean Facebook user increases geometrically. Five years after
Facebook was introduced in Korea, about ten million people in Korea are estimated to use it
on a daily basis. (Ko 1) According to this figure, Facebooks popularity increase rapidly for
five years and the average time of using Facebook has increased. (Lee 1) Actually The New
York Times said that people around the world spend time using Facebook about fifty minutes
per day averagely. It is much longer than the average time of exercising and reading and
comes close to average mealtime on a day. It means that people spend one-sixteenth of
twenty-four hours on using Facebook. (Lee 1) In other words, people spend their personal
time on using Facebook too much. That is to say, people have done excessive waste of time

and it means that they have lost a lot of personal time. They cannot have it in the end, such as
doing hobbies, working on a project, taking a rest and other things like self-development
activities.
There are many advantages by overusing Facebook surely but there are also many
disadvantages too. Since there are negative effects of overusing Facebook, people should
know that overuse of Facebook has a bad effect on their lives in numerous ways. Overusers
of Facebook have to reduce their time of using Facebook and correct their wrong life style.

Works Cited
Kim, Seongwook, ed. Facebooks Moment, Can It Classify Peoples Faces Automatically? Betanews.
Seongwook Kim, 17 June 2015. Web. 21 May 2016.
Ko, Sangmin, ed. Fifth anniversary of Facebook Korea, the Number of Korean Users is 16 million. Yonhap.
Sangmin Ko, 14 December 2015. Web. 23 May 2016.
Kwon, Sanghee, ed. "Facebook Sumit to Nonpermission of Face Recognition of the Europe and Canada."
Etnews. Sanghee Kwon, 11 May 2016. Web. 12 May 2016.
Lee, Jaeho, ed. "People All around World Use Facebook 50 Min per Day, Facebook Hunger for Its Higher
Value Still." Segye. Jaeho Lee, 6 May 2016. Web. 23 May 2016.
Yang, Hyeseung, Jinhee Kim, and Mihye Seo. Does Facebook Make Us Happy?: Examining the Relationship
among College Students Facebook Use, Upward. Rep. 58th ed. Vol. 6. Korean Society for Journalism
And Communication Studies, 2014. Korean Journal of Journalism & Communication Studies. Web.
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May 2016.