Facebook mania (Part 2)

A lot of matured people would agree with me on this as they are not uncommon.

Wasting time and being addicted
Look at that teen kid who failed his school test. From the most normal reasons is that he was playing games for too long or he was into 'social' stuffs instead of studying. From checking facebook status and notifications to the newly developed 'chat' mode, many people spend more time on facebook than with their family. And that is perceived to be the cool thing to do!

I have seen guys chatting with over 10 people simultaneously on facebook. It's not unique to facebook, as MSN and Yahoo would do this as well, but time wasted on talking about what that girl was wearing the other night and what that guy was talking the other day takes up more than time spent on life outside of facebook. It's very common to see in buses and trains, people checking on facebook and updating their 'status'. 'Twitter' is also another similar stuff, while that is more mobile-based.

No wonder companies and schools monitor how much time their employees and students spend on social sites and make redundancy decisions based on such information. Many companies and schools have blocked it as well. I am myself guilty of checking facebook and updating stuff during work, but I got away with it!

Some interesting and somewhat obvious quotes from an interview done by Associate Professor (Reader in UK) of Psychology in Carleton University, Canada can be read here. Various surveys and statistics are also available (use 'google'!) to see the time spent on facebook. We had drug addicts, sex addicts, games addicts, etc and now we have 'facebook addicts'!

Who's your friend?
The privacy concern is always there. Let's be honest, how many of your contacts do you know well enough? How many have you met or talked to over the phone?
I can pull out pictures, notes, private information about many people who are not even in my friends' list just by going from one page to another page. Security settings are not as secure as you think they are. And maybe your security settings are strong, but that photo album from your friend's friend contains photos of you and your lover smooching in that club which you probably don't want everyone to see!

And what happens when that picture is not only seen, but also shared to the whole world? How would you feel to see an almost naked picture of your sister in a 'drunkteens.com' type of website?

You might think, well I'm a guy, what can happen to me! Well, think again dude. A newspaper reported in Bangladesh that various groups of frauds are active, whereby they posed as 'hot chicks', befriended the guy, set up an appointment, took a hooker with them, let the hooker have five minutes of pleasure with the guy while the group secretly films it and takes photos, and then before you know it, they blackmail you. And you may happen to be this honest, decent guy everyone knows or a respected person in your family and stuff, and all that is about to die away.

All this might sound all about gloom and doom, but really, who's your friend and who's your friend's friend?

Poking other people's business
Now this is somewhat natural I guess and therefore people might just say it ain't poking, it's getting to know what your friends are up to. Well whatever you call it, your friend probably doesn't want you to see what type of conversations she is having with her future husband or her mother, and you may not want others to see that particular wall-to-wall conversation with one of your contacts.
Obviously, you should have used private messaging but other business, like what groups you join, what applications you use, it's all open to the world. And many people might have nothing better to do other than to catch up with what you're up to! And you may not even know that 'friend' of yours!

Blackmailing and misusing
I already mentioned about it above. But I emphasize again, I know of facebook accounts that have been hacked or maybe somehow the person got control of it, and then misused it fully. From using your private pictures to using your friends and family's private pictures and sharing them and putting them up in websites is not unheard of.

So what then?
Well people would use facebook, regardless of these adverse effects. I use facebook and would continue to use it. But it's important not to let this usage turn into an addiction or to put something in it that can be misused.

I know people use facebook for genuine, perfectly valid reasons, like being in touch with your brother who happens to live in Congo. Someone once commented, how would life be without facebook? I say, just go back about 4 years and you'd see how life was without facebook. People survived well without it, and will survive even if it stops tomorrow.