IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018 - 42

Facebook in Japan and revealed that users left Facebook mainly because of security concerns, the requirements for declaring the real name, and the complexity
of the Facebook interface [18]. Zheleva and Getoor [19]
demonstrated how privacy attacks, with a mixture of
public and private profiles can bypass the security settings in social networks. They also established evidence
on how surprisingly easy it was to obtain private information from friendship links and group memberships
on Facebook.

People find justifications for using
Facebook despite their concerns over
trust, privacy, and security.

Trust
Trust is yet another major concern about Facebook.
Lankton and McKnight [20] distinguished between interpersonal trust beliefs, which include integrity, competence, and benevolence, and technology trust beliefs,
which include reliability, functionality, and helpfulness.
In his study, Deuker [11] argued that users did not provide Facebook with any information that needs protection, as they did not trust Facebook as a technology.
Deuker [11] also revealed that users have doubts about
Facebook privacy settings as well.

Annoying Content
Another dark side of Facebook is annoying content. Fox
& Moreland [14] for instance, stated that users' reactions ranged from frustration to shock to revulsion at
inappropriate content. Shelton and Skalski [21] also
argued that Facebook includes negative content. Additionally, Butler [22] mentioned that risks increase with
users' posting inappropriate comments on Facebook,
where bullying can happen through text exchange and
Facebook posts [23].

Usefulness, Usability, and Enjoyment
Previous research investigated the usefulness of Facebook as a concern. Among current Facebook users,
61% have voluntary taken a break from Facebook mainly because they believed that using Facebook is a waste
of time and not useful as it contained too much gossip
and drama, or they were too busy and not interested
[24]. Similarly, it was shown that users' mood was negatively affected after using Facebook and users felt it was

less useful and a waste of time [25]. Other studies
reported usability issues with Facebook. Wang Y. et al.
[26] provided examples concerning usability where
feedback was not provided by Facebook when posting a
video; thus a user did not know that she had accidentally posted a video until the next day. Another user could
not delete a post on Facebook from his phone as he
expected that the same functionality should operate on
all platforms [26]. Similarly Morgan [27] mentioned that
Facebook has major usability issues because of the targeted ads, sponsored status updates, and requests from
third parties to get Facebook users to register for services. Li, Snow, and White [28] showed enjoyment as
another issue and illustrated user views on Facebook
with a user mentioning that Facebook is no more fun as
it is all about chatting.

Control
A few studies addressed concerns related to control on
Facebook. For example, Fox and Moreland [14] mentioned that users are not happy that Facebook is controlling their profiles. Facebook users were more
concerned when the newsfeed option was released
because they had less control over their information as
the new option was an easy window for others to access
their information [29].

So Why Do People Still Use Facebook?
With these investigations of Facebook concerns and
issues in previous research, a question arises as to why
people keep using Facebook if such negative perceptions and concerns exist?
Forty Facebook users were asked about the reasons
behind their Facebook use despite concerns. The replies were analyzed using qualitative content analysis
following the recommendations of [30]. The intention of
using content analysis was to identify recurring concepts or beliefs of a salient issue within the answers,
and to support any emergent issue from the replies [30].
Among the 40 respondents, 69% were female and
31% male. Thirty percent were between 18-24 years
old, 40% aged 25-34, 20% ages 35-44, and 10% were
over 44 years old. The respondents' ethnicity was mainly
Middle-Eastern 79%, followed by European 9%, Asian
5%, and 7% other/multi-racial.
In terms of educational level, 61% of the study population held a bachelor's degree followed by 19% Master's degree, 16% high school, and finally 4% were Ph.D.
degree holders.
Respondents answers were grouped under relevant
themes and reasons are presented in Table 1. The most
recurrent reason for continuing to use Facebook related
to perceiving Facebook as one of the most effective
channel of communication.

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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JUNE 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018