FACEBOOK BRINGS MORE HARM THAN GOOD.

First of all, thank you to our humble chairperson. Good morning to the honorable judges, respected

timekeeper, teachers and my fellow competitors. I stand here today to deliver my speech entitle

“Facebook brings more harm than good”.

I am sure that all of us present today have heard of Facebook or at least have a Facebook

account.Let us ponder on how Facebook itself has changed a lot of elements in our lives.

First let me define what is Facebook. According to an article by Anne DSouza, Facebook is a social

network founded byMark Zuckerberg with the help of his college friends and fellow student;

Eduardo Saverin, DustinMoskovitz and Chris Hughes. It was launched in February 2004 and during

that time it only had basic features compared to other social network such as Myspace and

Friendster. Many believed that due to the simple features in Facebook, it became bigger and bigger

as years passed. Facebook users have been reportedly increased up tp 43% in 2011 compared to the

previous years. Nowadays, the features of Facebook have been added to improve the social network.

People can fill up basic information, chat with friends, play games, join groups and even upload

photos to let others catch a glimpse of their own lives.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Exactly how far has Facebook affected our life? Nowadays, most people spend hours of their time

online and logged in into their social network account especially younger generation. Spending too

much time on Facebook will interrupt our daily routine and can result to ‘Facebook Addiction

Disorder’. Seymour Spacey from his article shared that this kind of addiction is a psychological

condition. Those suffering from it will have the urge to use Facebook beyond normal and natural

necessity. For those who are addicted to this social network, spending 30 minutes on Facebook will

not be enough to satisfy their emotional needs. When they spend too much time updating their

status, playing games or even‘stalking’ at other people’s profile, they become unfocused in life as

they tend to forget other important things that they need to do. There have been cases involving

Facebook addiction such as waking up in the middle of the night just to crop harvest in their virtual

farm. This is definitely one of the reason why Facebook is doing more harm than good.

Even serious, Facebook has recently become the medium for people to abuse othersthrough virtual

web. Rumors are easily spread through Facebook notes, photo uploads or even a simple status

update by uncivilized individual or groups. These rumors spread like wildfire in the World Wide Web

and most of us are easily influenced by these stuff. Some will even cause others to suffer from

humiliation because of what is posted on Facebook. There is also a recent case where a school girl

plotted a fatal mob attack via Facebook on someone she never met. Taken from the UK Dailymail

website on 1st of March, a teenage girl handed out of knives to a pack of teenagers aged between 15

and 18 years old in London so that they can hunt down and kill a 15 year old boy. In another case, a

teen girl was digitally abused when three guys started a group to make fun of her which causes her

to feel humiliated and lost confidence. This proves that sometimes what we see or write in the

virtual world especially Facebook can be destructive to others.

Let me add one more reason why I say that Facebook brings more harm than good. Too much

information posted in Facebook can lead to invasion of privacy. Nowadays, we can see people using

Facebook and updating their current location exposing them to harmful threats. Who knows what

can happen when you tell the whole world your exact location. Hackers can always find a way to

hack your profile to get to your photos or information that you might have filled in. With todays’

technology they can Photoshop those photos and sell them for money. Worse they might use it to

blackmail certain individuals. That is why we must be cautious when filling in details online so that

we can at least prevent anything bad from happening to our family and friends.

In 2011, a survey made by Seventeen magazines shared that 38% of their readers wish they could

escape social media like Facebook and Myspace or wish it did not exist at all. Therefore, I would like

to conclude that although there are advantages of Facebook, but it can bring more harm than good

to its users in today’s environment.

Thank You.