Social media has become one of the largest forms of communication in the modern world. Many different types of platforms have been created over the years to insure everyone stays connected over the worldwide web, but have these platforms been used for their intended purposes? or have they spun out of control.

Facebook. One of the first major forms of social media that has spread from a few thousand to millions of users everyday. This website was created by Mark Zuckerberg when he was attending Harvard University. The initial reason Zuckerberg created this platform was to get back at a girl he was dating because she dumped him. Jealously, Zuckerberg stayed up for hours setting up a website for people at his school to rate girls that attended. Very quickly word got around of this hilarious website where you could see all the girls that went to your school and rate them. This soon became a big problem, obviously, when then school heard about it. They let him keep the website up as long as it was for the benefit of the school, so, Zuckerberg made Facebook. At first it was just Harvard, then it quickly spread to universities everywhere. Now I’m pretty sure we all know about the first scandal Zuckerberg was in with being accused of stealing the idea from the Winklevoss twins very early in the life of Facebook, but that’s not the only scandal Facebook has been involved in. Facebook is now known for stealing peoples privacy within the platform. Though almost everyone knows about this, so many people still continue to use it, I know I do. Nowadays there are so many types of social media platforms that Facebook might be left in the dust. I personally only use it to keep my family updated with my life just to make my mom and grandma happy lol.

Though social media has brought people together and has brought happiness and entertainment to all, there is a dark side to the internet that almost everyone has seen. Cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is when someone repeatedly comments or posts nasty stuff about someone else over the internet. Cyberbullying may not sound that bad because its not in person face-to-face bullying, but cyberbullying is one of the leading causes of suicide nowadays. When people are talking through a screen they feel almost invincible because they aren’t looking at each other in real life. This becomes a very viscous cycle of extreme bullying. When we look at people like Jennifer Connell, her nephew ran up and hugged her by surprise and fell over breaking her wrist. She decided to try and sue for the insurance money. Once the first news outlet found out about this and published the headline “Aunt Sues Nephew For Hugging Her”, it was all down hill from their. it could the eye of so many people and they began to call her names and told her to kill herself even when they’ve never met her. it got even worse when she got the image of some prissy rich New York City girl who couldn’t hold her plate at a party. Things like this get out of hand so quickly and hatred is spread so much faster. And its not even just in social media, its also in online video games as well. I see it all the time and try to speak up so they’d stop tormenting someone, but hatred always seem to prevail. its mind blowing to me how people get so angry and flustered over a game or a headline that they let themselves say these horrible things to someone they’ve never met before.

Do you think Facebook is gonna disappear with the boomers? do you think cyberbullying will ever stop?