I'm not familiar with your particular camera, but there are some general truths about the effectiveness of built in flash when it comes to digital cameras.
Most built-in flashes only have a small effective range. Anything beyond that will be nice and dark.
Also, if you're taking pictures of people in low light, the camera will only attempt to properly light up the subject in focus which often results in very dark backgrounds since the flash isn't effective at lighting up things farther away.
One way of countering this is to both use the flash and to slow down your shutterspeed. In using the flash, it should properly expose the subject and in using a slower shutterspeed, that'll allow more background light to enter your camera thus making your background appear brighter.
On cameras like the Canon DSLR's, if you have the camera in AV (Aperture priority) mode with the flash turned on, the camera will do both for you. It'll determine the proper amount of flash to use properly expose the subject in focus plus keep the shutter open long enough to properly expose the background. But be careful, any movement from you or the subject will result in ghostly images.
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