Facebook and its Dire Effects

The advent of technology has greatly touched the lives of many people. It has dramatically changed the way people live. Through technology, some of the less convenient means of living were tremendously improved. For an instance, flipping through your iPad has caused reading newspapers an almost obsolete way of keeping yourself abreast of the news. Nowadays, not having complete access to the internet would mean paralysis for some. These advancements, by all odds, have made the world a better place to live; it’s as if everything’s being served on a silver platter.

The influence of technology is so powerful that it has also penetrated the way we communicate with other people. Different social networking sites had sprung like mushrooms, all aiming to make communication, at the least bit, comfortable (not to mention, entertaining).

One of the most notable and heavily-used social networking site would be Facebook. Facebook was launched in February 2004, and was founded by Mark Zuckerberg. This particular networking site has captured the interest of almost all people. To have a Facebook account nowadays has become a necessity, almost a way of life. Being capable of receiving news and updates from your friends first handedly is just one of the fascinating things you can do in this site, not to mention the great amount of hearsays that gossipmongers would love to acquire.

As many people know, Facebook is indeed the largest social network in the world today. Facebook is helping people connect with their friends, and relatives from all over the world. It makes human begin life much easier. However, since it is getting well-known, bad things start to take place.

Facebook is already losing its intended purpose. It has become a melting pot of misunderstandings, feuds, and complicated but nonsense virtual altercations, to say the least. Though Facebook categorically allows us to speak out ‘What’s on your mind’, that doesn’t give us the utmost freedom to write everything we wanted to write and be nonchalant about other people’s feelings. All great things in life come with responsibility and accountability. Bringing someone else’s rift on Facebook is like making public one’s private life (an oxymoron, indeed). These things, ultimately, are not meant for public consumption. To banter publicly (and brutally) with anybody is an aberration of social graces.

In addition to that, relationships developed on Facebook (at a distance) are by default weaker than the real relationships, lacking physical and emotional conduct. This leads to a ritualistic involvement that turns into addiction and belligerently deprives you from your real life by triggering you to log on several times a day.

According to a research, this social networking site has caused stress to some of its users. More than one out of every 10 users said that the site made them anxious, and about three out of ten claimed to feel guilty about rejecting friend requests. Others said they felt pressure to come up with inventive status updates, and didn't enjoy having to apply different rules of online etiquette to different friends.

But, if Facebook causes so much stress, why do so many people use it? According to lead researcher Dr. Kathy Charles, the "overwhelming majority" of students said they rely on the site to keep in touch with their friends, and many said they won't delete their accounts because they don't want to miss out on something important or offend others.

This pressure, Charles says, keeps Facebook users in a constant state of "neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good." Many of the students surveyed, however, weren't all that enthusiastic about the real or perceived benefits that the site offers. “Although there is great pressure to be on Facebook there is also considerable ambivalence amongst users about its benefits," Charles explained. "And we found it was actually those with the most contacts, those who had invested the most time in the site, who were the ones most likely to be stressed."

It’s not everything wrong about Facebook. In many cases, you can catch up with old friends, find valuable information, promote your work and your business, support really important causes and meet people who can be real friends in the process. Meanwhile, the usage of Facebook beyond its intended purpose must be curbed for our own sake.