You’ve heard it all before: Facebook is an extremely popular website with lots of pros and cons. You can keep in touch with friends, play games, etc. However, with every change Mark Zuckerberg’s employees enact, Facebook becomes less of a place to just chat with friends and more of an important news source.

Think about it: when is the last time you didn’t first hear about the death of a celebrity through at least thirty of your friends’ statuses? With the ability to find out breaking information so fast, Facebook puts things like the Beaver County Times and KDKA to shame. It’s an amazing thing to find out about natural disasters just minutes after they strike or that you already have a two-hour delay for the next morning just seconds after the decision is made.

On the other hand, just because your acquaintance posts that a tornado hit Beaver County doesn’t mean it’s true. They probably misread a tornado warning. Breaking news that you only learn about from Facebook can easily be blown out of proportion, especially when it has been the victim of a huge game of telephone.

Typical Facebook users have hundreds of friends who are all competing to be the first to cover important news – much like sources such as CNN and Fox. Because of this, your news feed is often plastered with the same information, status update after status update. If everyone with a Facebook account is talking about the same thing, it becomes way more believable. The problem with this is, people are now less likely to research on their own and it makes the population lazier as a whole. Even if you don’t intend to replace MSNBC with Facebook, such an outcome becomes almost inevitable as time goes on.

It’s hard to say that receiving important news as fast as someone can type it is a bad thing. However, when it comes down to non-reputable sources, increased gullibility, and embellished information, it’s also hard to say it’s the best source.