When Ryan Cecil first made me a Facebook I refused to log into my account. I already had a myspace and really didn't want another because as far as I was concerned social networking was a slow waste of time that just didn't appeal to me. But one day I finally logged on and figured out how to post my first status and was amazed when I got a notification 12 seconds later saying someone had commented! I commented back and suddenly I had 2 notifications about people commenting, I could not believe how fast it was working, I kept trying to end the conversation and log off but between comments and posts it felt almost impossible. This was so much better than myspace and after getting home from school I would spend hours at the computer posting, liking, checking my happy aquarium fish, it was ridiculous. The whole site design in itself was inviting, rather than the dark cluttered profiles of myspace with names like ***cR@ZZyGurll98***, you had a clean white wall, with blue trim with your full name all neat and tidy like an Ikea display.
I don't think Facebook users always see the risks involved, sure we acknowledge the occasional fight, laugh at the drunk picture uploaded of our friend and try to minimize the cussing because most of us are friends with family members. But none of us consider how we are researched by companies, how our younger siblings are saying far too much and adding people they don't know or how we can be viewed by vague connections we don't know at all. the fact alone that "7.5 million kids age 12 and younger are on Facebook" was something completely new to me and also the aspect of them being far too young to understand proper communication to an audience of hundreds of different individuals makes social networking seem like a pretty dangerous technological playground.
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