I started using Facebook back in 2007 after a lot of peer pressure and after many friends and relatives started using it.
The reason why I delayed and pondered whether to join or not, was about my privacy concerns and about the fact that posting personal photos of myself, friends and family was not something that made me feel at ease.
During the years, I have been using Facebook, I was becoming truly aware of its negative effect on my psyche and the psyche of many of those who were on my friends list.
In late 2012, I took the decision to quit using Facebook. It was an easy choice. I did lose many of my “friends”, but I won real ones that make effort to write me an email and see me in person.
In late 2014, I re-activated my account in order to promote this blog. I also changed the way I use it: Just as an advertisement platform and a little bit like a social network.
Facebook has so many positive aspects to it such as:
- You can learn new things by joining the right groups
- Many elderly people use it (grand ma, grand pa, mom and dad, etc…) and thus you can connect with them if you’re living abroad
- You can promote your product, website and what not
- You can organize events
- You can host your own Facebook page and spread knowledge, links and other external articles
- If you have absolutely nothing to do, then it is a time killer…especially those cat videos! 😛
In this article though, I share with you what I consider some of the negative aspects, that hurt your psyche, of using Facebook.
1. Compare and Despair
There seems to be a trend where people post news or pictures on Facebook in a way to show others how their life is better and how lucky they are.
This in turn can cause some insecure friends to start to compare their life, feel a sense of competition or even desperation.
The whole posting thing became a subtle form of competition and a way to ask for attention.
2. Losing social skills
“Let’s be friends on Facebook”…and what is not said often afterwards is: “and we won’t have to meet or interact in person”.
What’s the point to have 300+ friends if you really interact with just a bunch of them?
Day after day, people are losing their in-real-life social skills and human interaction skills in favor of impersonal electronic communication
3. Ego satisfaction
Many status updates on Facebook tend to boost and even boast the ego of the poster and have no real value or necessity to be posted for the public or your circle of friends to see.
Many times, some people who are so full of themselves, take pride in not replying to messages. It seems they just enjoy getting so many messages to validate their worth but they fail to reply and communicate with others.
4. Developing attention deficit disorder
Have you noticed how people are glued to their phones these days? You go out with people and they keep on checking their phones. You try to continue a conversation with them only to see them nervous and reaching to their phone to check the Facebook notifications or notifications from other social media tools. After some time, the need to get distracted becomes a habit and thus exhibits symptoms of ADD.
5. Narcissism and the selfie culture
Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and other tools are becoming a way to self-advertise and give one a dose of attention from the viewers.
For instance, girls post selfies with duck face, cleavage, bathroom mirror shots and what not! Then they wait for the 300+ likes from guys. Many times I observed that no matter what kind of picture the girls post, there will always be bluepill guys drooling and waiting to leave some comments in the hope of getting a chance of personal interaction from those girls.
My advise to men: Men, go your own way!
6. Wasting time
Facebook is a real time waster. Each time you interrupt the task you are doing (be it a conversation with real people, doing your work, or driving) you are wasting your time to attend to something that is virtual and not essential to real life.
Each minute wasted on such activities cannot be recovered and is a waste of precious time. Think about it.
7. An outlet for social and psychological behavioral research
Think of it. Any company with brains will hire data scientists and psychologist in order to understand all the interaction of people and learn about their behavior. It is a no brainer that every little interaction we do on Facebook or other social media outlets help those companies to better understand our behaviors and later manipulate our emotions with the data we voluntarily gave out. In fact, this has already happened before.
8. Encourages stalking
Nowadays, the first thing people do after they get your name is try to find you on Facebook and add you as a friend, even though you barely know them or just met them.
Many times it is used to tell how “good” a person is, based on her/his photos, check pictures of hot guys or girls, etc…
Conclusion
To conclude, I repeat that Facebook, like any other things in life has two sides: positive and negative. It is up to you how to use that double edged sword.
Anyway, if you stop and ask yourself these questions, you may discover that you too may be suffering from Facebook:
- Why you feel sad after I use Facebook?
- What is a much better and more constructive way to use of my time instead of wasting on Facebook?
- Who am I trying to impress by posting photos and selfies on Facebook?
- Why am I stalking another person on Facebook?
- Why I keep exploring profiles of friends and friends of friends on Facebook?
Please leave your comments and thoughts in the comments.
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