What Is Facebook Addiction?
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world today; it has more to it than meets the eye.
Facebook was founded in 2004 by a young genius, Mark Zuckerberg. The site began as a networking site for the 4000 students at the university of Harvard.
It quickly grew into a nation-wide college networking site and soon after became a worldwide site used by over 500 million people.
Facebook used properly has all sorts of great uses. Facebook users create a personal profile where they can include whatever they’d like to share about themselves. They can download pictures, videos, add other Facebook users as friends, join groups and download applications.
College and high school graduates can get in touch with old friends who would otherwise be lost to them unless they went to a reunion. Kids who go away to boarding schools or colleges can keep in touch with friends from home. They can keep in touch with the friends they made while they were away.
You can send invitations to friends for social events, fundraisers, and work or school related events. Facebook sends notification reminders of the event to the people invited to and attending the event.
Facebook has an application that tells you about all your friends’ birthdays for each day. I have personally been saved once or twice by this notification; sisters don’t give good birthday gifts to little brothers who forget their birthdays.
Facebook is a good way to get a hold of people. If you don’t have someone’s number then you can always Facebook him or her by using either mail or instant messaging on the Facebook homepage.
Facebook is also a good way to meet people who may be interested in the same things as you if you are someone who are into the whole cyber-friend thing.
Although there are many things that make Facebook great, these things happen to be same reasons that Facebook is the devil. The worst thing about Facebook is how addicting it can be. There are 500 million active users. On any given day, at least half of those users will log onto Facebook.
Two hundred million of these users have Facebook on their mobil device; these users are twice as active on Facebook then non-mobile users.
People who are truly addicted are like alcoholics; they need to “Facebook”.
Addicts spend all day uploading new pictures playing games and making sure everyone on Facebook knows exactly what they’re doing.
Addicts tend to post things like Cameron Bobeck –“I’m cooking a feast tonight. NY strip. Sliced cheese potatoes casserole and croissants. Apple pie for desert. What’s good chef Bobo.”
Thanks Bobeck. I was wondering what you were eating tonight.
The world spends way too much time on Facebook. People spend more then 700 million minutes on Facebook each month. (Facebook.com)
There are many applications or “apps” that people waist hours of their day working on. For instance, last year’s phenom app. Farmville. An application that became very popular at the end of 2009. It seemed like everyone had a little pretend farm that they were attending to with utmost vigor and consistency.
Farmville is a simulation game that replicates running a farm. You can plant crops and take care of animals and buy whatever farm equipment you would like with the money you make.
The thing about Farmville is that you have to tend to your farm; if you don’t water your crops or feed your animals, they die.
So the pathetic part is that everyone who got sucked into Farmville would have to get on Facebook at least once or twice a day to make sure his or her farms stayed “alive.”
At my school, kids would have competitions for having the largest farm. They would spend whatever free time they had tending to their farm. I even caught a teacher on Farmville during class.
Although farming isn’t the most glorified job, Farmville has more then 53 million active users.
The “book” serves as a distraction even for those who aren’t addicted.
People who have jobs where they spend lots of time on computers and kids who have to do a lot of school work with computers can easily get distracted on Facebook, since it is just a click away.
At my school you can walk by someone on his or her laptop and expect him or her to have Facebook open somewhere on his or her computer.
I have found if I just shut “the Book” out while doing work, I’ll get work done twice as fast and I don’t even consider my self as a big “Facebooker.”
Although Facebook is a social networking site it can ruin real social experiences for people.
Individuals stop socializing in person but via Facebook instead ruining real social experiences. Often people become Facebook “friends” with people who they don’t know or have met only once.
Some people send requests to people who they don’t know or accept requests from people they don’t know so that they can increase their friend’s list. Their friend’s list becomes a sort of fantasy list of people they would like to know.
Some users with a low self-esteem will create a profile of themselves that is really a portrayal of someone who they want to be, not who they actually are.
They take pictures with angles in the mirror that show their good sides, have only pictures that make them look good, make their profiles say the perfect stuff. They lie about their age and say what ever seems to be appealing.
In an article I read about avid Facebookers being narcissistic, there was a quote that I believe sums up most “Facebookers.” “Using Facebook is the online equivalent of staring at yourself in the mirror.”
While this doesn’t apply to every Facebook user, it may apply to the 200 million with Facebook on their mobile device or to the kids putting “1 arm pull-ups in Chile” or “Just did 45 min. of intervals” (thank you Logan Mackie for letting us all know about your athletic abilities.)
But the perfect example again goes to our favorite bigheaded NSA graduate, Cameron Bobeck, “so I’m in the gym lookin’ ripped. All hot and sweaty. Hot chick keep eyeing me and dropping hints. yet i still say nothing to her and walk out like a little wimp. what the”.
Kids put way to much information on their Facebooks. Young kids put their names, numbers, addresses and other personal info up that people from around the world can see.
While this doesn’t pose a problem when their true friends are looking at their profile, the thing is their friends aren’t the only ones looking. There are predators all over the web.
Although there are many ways to hide your information, and make it so only select people can see it, Facebook can provide all the information some of these sick people are looking for.
Facebook can get people in all sorts of trouble.
Kids can forget that they’re not the only ones on Facebook,. One kid may post pictures of parties, or whatever shenanigans their friends and them are involved in on Facebook.
School, parents and bosses look at their pictures. Then they find themselves getting in all sorts of trouble just because someone decided they should post a picture.
Facebook can also be used as an electronic type of bullying or harassment. This is called cyberbullying.
People can have pictures and information posted about themselves by other people. Even if someone doesn’t approve or want something to be posted about themselves online.
Once someone posts something there is little anyone else could do about it. So I could post an embarrassing picture of an individual and all of my friends would see it.
It’s easy for someone to mess with a person’s profile. If some one leaves their profile logged in on a computer or has a password that someone else knows. It’s possible to change all their info to say stuff that would make a mockery out of the person.
At my school, a kid forgot to log out of his Facebook and some of his friends messed with his profile and sent some stuff to a few friends. Although they didn’t post anything too serious, the kid who’s profile was used was irritated by it. The school found out and the kids got in a boatload of trouble.
Facebook gives folks a great opportunity to make huge idiots out of themselves. Facebook has taken over the Internet.
Facebooks chat box has made Instant messenger obsolete people used to communicate through AOL’s instant messenger but instead now they just log on to Facebook.
Myspace was one of the first online social networking sites; it was the most popular site for a few years until Facebook took over.
Although I can’t say I am very disappointed that Myspace is out of the picture… there were way to many creepy people on that site.
Facebook becomes more and more like a billboard everyday. When Facebook first began there was a few advertisements on it but it has quickly blown up. There is advertising all over the site.
Although I’m sure it is beneficial to many companies, it get a little annoying to have so many products waved in front of my face whenever I log in.
My cousin deleted her Facebook profile a few years back. When I asked her why she didn’t have a Facebook any more, she gave me a long spiel about how bad Facebook was. Well a few months later I got a notification that she was back on Facebook.
Although my stance is clearly against Facebook, I am not going to delete my profile because, well, I think it’s obvious how that would end up a few weeks later! Instead I am going to move it from being my first bookmark on my laptop’s toolbar to the last, right after the new bookmark.
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