Question

Consider this hypothetical example. Facebook is becoming fashionable as a social medium among people, including university faculty and students. Assume the (market equilibrium) annual subscription for facebook per year is $1,200. Many faculty and students are now using it.

a) What are the private benefit to you for using facebook? (Hint: what skills will students acquire from using facebook?)

b) What are the social benefit to the faculty and student community of using facebook?

c) What are the private costs to you for using facebook?

d) What are the social costs to the faculty and student community for using facebook?

e) In your own opinion, do you think facebook would generate positive or negative externalities in the university community? Explain!

f) Should the university subsidize or tax the faculty and student use of facebook?

Answer 1

Answer: a) Facebook is one of the biggest social networking sites in these days. Everyone who has the knowledge about this site create own profile. Let I am a student who takes the advantages of Facebook. Facebook provides many private advantages to it's users like chat, video calling, posting your opinions and feelings, searching your known and get information about them etc. The biggest advantage of using Facebook is that you can connect with the whole world in this field. You can get the latest news feeds from this sites. Here you can spend your time when you are free and becoming bore. These all are the private advantages of using Facebook and as an Facebook user I am able to take these advantages.

b) Faculty and students can be connected at any time by Facebook according to their needs. And hence students gets help in their studies by guiding faculties at any time. Faculty can update any important information related to the university in Facebook. Thus students gets latest informations about the university. These all are social benefits to students and faculty.

c) Facebook has many demerits also. If as an user I update my personal information on social media,i.e., Facebook then other people get informations about myself and they can take advantages of this against me. Because there exist many fake profiles. If a real person blogging , updates, then scammers can hack the real profile. Scammers also send links to open Facebook by the given link. If you open this link then scammers can easily hack your profile. Some peoples spend their most times on Facebook and hence they becomes Facebook addicted which keeps them away from the real life.

d) If faculty or student update any wrong information then both groups can face trouble. Even that sometimes faculty can lose their job and students can also get suspended from university. These are social cost to faculty and students.