"We gotta stand a little closer."

Social Capital’s basis is around communication and interaction between one human being and another. Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to keep in touch with old friends, make new friends, and interact with people on the internet. The question I asked my fellow students at UNCSA is “Is facebook a good thing or a bad thing?” I allowed them to choose between a thumbs up sign and a thumbs down sign to display their opinion and then they elaborated through words.

Facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with my friends and family that live far away and reconnect with friends that I have not interacted with in years. However despite Facebook certainly having some positive effects it also has a lot of negative ones regarding my social capital. By talking to people online a sort of safety net between you and the person arises and you say things you wouldn’t normally say in person. Also by being able to keep in touch with so many people online, it sometimes cuts out actually hanging out with them. Sometimes I feel like because I talked to them online that I don’t really have to make time to see them in person. Another negative effect of Facebook is procrastination. I spend too much time checking it and chatting with friends when I should be working or going out and physically hanging out with people. I think in the end it will benefit us all to use Facebook a little less, and when we do use it to use it to make plans for hanging out in person.

Here are some Facebook facts:

• More than 300 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 40 million status updates each day
• More than 10 million users become fans of Pages each day
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States