discover.

Facebook Addiction March 11, 2009

Nowadays, social networking has become inseparable part of society. People subscribe to certain sites, get new friends, and interact with their old friends and distant relatives. Internet has been improved in such a way that people now are able to access websites deliberately. The tendency of people looking for online friends rises as internet connection improves, and this fact leads to the increasing number of social networking sites. Amongst hundreds of social networking sites across the globe, the most popular one is facebook.

facebook is founded by a genius from Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004. His first intention was about connecting Harvard students to each other, but the network he made grew up rapidly and was able to connect students from different universities in the States. After five years of improvement, Zuckerberg’s site has become famous around the world. Millions of people subscribed as facebook users, thus making Zuckerberg a rich young man. However, it is ironic to state that millions of people are addicted to this social networking site.

Given the question of one’s reasons why he/she joins facebook, most of the users state that facebook is faster than any other social networking sites. The other reasons are its interesting features (e.g. online games or online gifts) and detailed events (e.g. music concert or art exhibition). An event can be described well by using notes or personal messages, since facebook has no limitations of words used in a message or note. In addition, people can always share photos with everyone and limit access on certain settings. facebook also has fewer advertisements compared to another social networking sites, thus people are secure from spams. However, the most important reason to join facebook is that people can keep up to date with their friend’s status without meeting them face-to-face.

On the other hand, facebook may cause addiction. Some groups of world’s younger generation feel like their day is ruined when they’re not logging in to facebook. A habitual facebook user, someone who logs in to facebook all the day and enjoys everything offered by the site, is susceptible to health interference such as dementia, heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Genes of heavy facebook user are often altered and damaged, as well, thus the user’s performance declines. This genetic alteration causes distortion of immunity, hormonal system, and body’s circulation. Privacy of contents such as notes, status, and pictures are often hacked by online bastards, and no one could keep away from this. facebook may leads its users to antisocial behaviour, since the users are only attached to the site and doing nothing else. Even though facebook offers us new friends, people tend to stick with the ones they already knew. e-mail notifications are just another annoyance. Some of us doesn’t want any notifications of someone doing something in their facebook account, but these notifications frequently appear by itself in one’s e-mail.

On the one hand, facebook is so beneficial because it links us to far-away people and acquaintants. On the other hand, our account can be abused by hackers. Hackers extract one’s personal informations – such as birthday, hobbies, and occupation – from one’s account to a fake account he made, and tell wrong news about the person. Most of facebook addicts are college students, and they keep logging in to facebook longer than time they spend on doing tasks. This may leads to one’s bad mark, and it is equal to academic homicide. In addition, some files posted in one’s account are permanently attached, no one can delete the information. The situation will be worsening if the source of the file itself is unknown, a virus might have been attacking the file as well as our computer.

Considering the fact that facebook addiction is now widespread, we must be extra careful when logging in to the site. To avoid unwanted things like what I’ve mentioned from happening, firstly we should be able to tell whether we are addicted to facebook or other social networking sites. It is somewhat easy to see. If someone keeps procrastinating his/her schedules just to see what’s going on in their facebook account, then he/she is addicted to facebook. The level of addiction rises as someone gets angry if his/her friend request is ignored or given compliments from parents, roommates, or friends. Heavy facebook users – facebook addicts – start to develop antisocial behaviour. Those users relaxes their minds by playing games or commenting on friend’s facebook status. They usually have more virtual friends, since most of their days are spent in front of the screen and scrolling pointers towards facebook activities.

It is quite difficult to quit a habit. Quitting facebook is just as difficult as quitting alcohol or cigarette. However, experts have suggested some methods to follow. We can set goals of visiting facebook such as saying ‘happy birthday’ to our old friend living abroad, or manage your time to visit the site in a day. If we don’t want any e-mail notification, just uncheck the e-mail notification box in each applications. If all those above seem to not working, just block the site and leave facebook forever. It always works, though might be difficult at the beginning. Besides, we can think of more importan things to do, such as research data to fulfill our assignments.
QUESTIONS

1. Do you have any facebook / other social-networking accounts? If so, how long have you been joining the sites? What do you think of sites like this?

2. Do you consider yourself as a facebook / social-networking addict? Why? If you do, does it ever cross your mind to quit social networking?

3. Is there anything bad / improper that you experienced when you’re using facebook (e.g. a chat with unwanted person, blackmails)? If there is, how do you cope?

4. Would you allow your children to subscribe to any social networking sites when they are already 10 years old? Why / why not?