Stalk your ex, remember a colleagues’ birthday or poke a school-friend. What on earth would the 21th century be without Facebook? In January 2011 the community counted 600 million users worldwide. Not bad for college dropout Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the omnipresent social network with a few other roommates. Since the word “unfriend” has become an official part of the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2010 there is no turning back: “unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook.” The social network is not only making history with new vocabulary. It’s gradually changing social behaviour.
Don't blame Facebook
Facebook has mainly been criticized as a risk for data privacy. But what do social networks do with society? While data privacy on Facebook has improved a little. Now users can permanently delete their accounts and decide, which content they are willing to share with whom. After all, is it not the user himself, who posts, what he had for dinner on a daily basis? Why do especially young people virtually strip so excessively, when they know the risks?
Checking out and being up to date
The psychological and social effects on being online 24/7 are becoming a serious issue. A research performed by psychologists from Edinburgh Napier University concluded that Facebook adds stress to users' lives: The fear of not “being up to date” ties people to laptops and cell phones. Teenagers browse through self-glorifying peer-profiles just to turn ridiculously jealous at the end of the day. But older age-groups are also affected. Just recently, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers announced, that one in five divorces involve Facebook. The ability of checking out your old flame anywhere and anytime can be quite tempting.
Reality is just a buzz away
American colleges are fighting with their students’ online -addiction. In lectures general concentration is being replaced by Facebook, Ebay and online-games every day. Some professors at the University of Missouri were even forced to ban laptops in their courses to stop the rising amount of failing grades. One can assume, it should not be any different in other western-oriented countries. Can’t we be fully “there” anymore with all this peeping and buzzing technology distracting from reality? Multi-tasking has become en vogue. While the internet improves communication it worsens real awareness. Are we turning into self-portraying idiots?
What no invention can replace
To be fair on the matter, social networks can be a great thing. Your best friend can move anywhere, keeping in touch is at least virtually be no problem (Unless your friend moves to China.). While technology can improve conditions of communication easily, it will never replace the most important thing for social interaction: plain sensitiveness. The ability to be aware of what others are feeling. It’s the ability to read the story, someone is telling between the lines. The Daily Telegraph reported a sad example of how much people are forgetting this ability in the age of information overload: When a 42 year old women from Brighton, South-England announced her suicide through a Facebook post, none of her 1048 friends helped, although some lived just a few blocks away. It seems ironic: The more ways of communication we invent, the less we are prepared to devote ourselves to fellow human beings.
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