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 Facebook was founded in 2004 in Cambridge Massachusetts. It was founded by 4 Harvard students named Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Facebook was originally started for just Harvard students. You needed to have a Harvard email in order to sign up. One day after Facebook was released it reached over 1,000 users. The platform grew to more and more colleges and after just one year it had over 1 million users. Today, Facebook has over 3 billion active monthly users making it the largest social media platform in the world. 

Facebook also owns 94 companies, with the top three being Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus. They have recently changed their company name to Meta which many people say is a surprise. Why change one of the most recognized brand names? The company is trying to expand itself to the metaverse which is a new technology still in its early stages. It is a virtual reality world that is always running just like the world we are living in today. You can currently buy plots of land in the metaverse and almost do anything that you can do in the real world.

Facebook has made a major impact on the world. It created a new way of social media that anyone could use no matter what age they are. It opened up the door for other major social media companies like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and more. Facebook created a new and easier way to communicate with anyone you want. It helps people stay connected with people. This could be done by posting a status update, where you give updates on current things going on in your life. This allowed you to stay in touch with people that you don't see everyday. Facebook also allowed people to communicate with the friends at the same time. If you make a Facebook post it is avaliable for all of your friends to see. This made it much easier for people who live far away from eachother to stay up to date on whats going on in eachothers lives. 

Although Facebook has a lot of positive impacts on the world, it came with some negative impacts. Facebook has been involved in multiple scandals regarding privacy. Facebook was caught giving out private information from over 87 million people in one of their biggest scandals. This was also investigated deeply because it involved the 2016 presidential election. There has also been other things that were out of Facebooks power that have impacted the world negatively. One of the major impacts is cyberbully. It is a major problem but, there is no real way to stop it. People are allowed to comment pretty much whatever they want on post, which leads to a lot of hate. Another issue is that it's a major distraction because it's addictive. People can easily scroll through the Facebook app for hours. Lastly, Facebook is very stalker friendly. Anyone can find your account and people even make fake accounts acting like they are someone else. Also, a big issue is that people don't think before they post. For example, someone could post that they are on a family vacation not thinking that it clearly shows they aren't home. This has been known to cause people to break into homes. 

Overall, I would say that Facebook's positive impacts outweigh it's negative impacts. It has created a platform for people to stay in touch. People love to talk about themselves and what is going on in their lives. This gives them the option to tell everyone they know about their lives. I do think that with all the scandals that they have been involved in, people should be very careful when they post on Facebook. Without Facebook I don't know if other major social media companies would be a thing.