On this day some ten years ago, five undergraduates–Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Mark Zuckerberg–launched “thefacebook” from their Harvard College dorm room. Although Facebook is now becoming the AOL of social media, prior probability salutes the original bold founders of Facebook. They did what no professor or politician dares to do. They changed the world.
But did Facebook and social media generally (Twitter, Instagram, WordPress, Google+ (*), etc.) change the world for the worse or for the better? Tell me what you think …
(*) Shouldn’t Google+ be renamed Google?? After all, no one seems to know how to use it.
prior probability 
As much as social media programs have changed the way people connect, the benefits do not outweigh the costs. The children of this generation are growing so accustomed to constant communication that sitting alone in a room to reflect on your thoughts is a thing of the past. When sitting in a room full of teenagers, each teenager has their cell phone in hand and is likely more focused on who posted what on Facebook then people in the room. And it isn’t only children and teenagers with the problem, adults are becoming victims of social media themselves. I go through constant thoughts that I need to delete my Facebook to increase productivity. After all, is it really necessary to check Facebook to feel connected to the outside world? No. Nonetheless, I still haven’t deleted mine and don’t see it actually happening in the future.
Great point. The time costs of playing around on Facebook and other social media sites are non-trivial. But on the other hand, since time is a scarce and finite resource, what if we are spending less time watching TV and using that same amount of time on Facebook — writing up our status updates and spying on the lives of others? If this were true (is it, though?), then you could argue that the time costs are a wash.