5 Ways Facebook Ruins Our Life_Bristi Saha

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5 Ways Facebook Ruins Our Life

Prepared By:

Bristi Saha

ID: 2014- 2- 11-011

Assignment for ENG 103

December 24, 2014

Prepared for:

Abdus Selim

Department of English

Central Womens’Unuiversity



5 Ways Facebook Ruins Our Life 1

Online Social networking allows people to connect with each other. This concept arises

from basic need that we all want to stay together in groups forming a community. Facebook (FB)

is like a modern day invention- from teenagers to elderly, everyone is familiar to this wonder of

modern time. FB is a platform, widely called a social networking platform, that allows user to

create profile, upload photos and videos, do chats and many other useful functions. Using FB,

one can communicate with friends and family living in very distant places. FB is available in

many different languages including our mother language- Bengali. Supporters of FB say that it

promotes increased interaction with friends and family; offer teachers, librarians, and students

valuable access to educational support and many other advantages. It seems like FB is bundle of

unlimited number of valuable features, but many research has found that FB could have

numerous negative aspects that can hurt us in many unintended ways. And I agree to the

statement that FB can neither be healthy nor be beneficial to our life.

It is true that FB has numerous features that enhance our everyday life experience. It

allows us to remain connected with people who live far away from us and allows us to share our

status of everyday life with a large audience. But we have to keep in mind that FB is actually a

virtual world and in a virtual world it is very difficult to recognize the truth. In many studies it

has been found that teenagers are the worst affected. A psychologist by profession, Rosen (2011)

said, “Teens and young adults who logged onto Facebook constantly were more narcissistic. The

social network feeds into a narcissist’s M.O. perfectly by allowing people to broadcast

themselves 24/7 on their own terms. Among users of all ages, the more people used Facebook,

the more likely they were to have antisocial personality disorder, paranoia and anxiety”. In the

following sections I will explain the most important 5 ways how Facebook affects our life

negatively.




Cyber bullying is bullying that takes place using electronic technology. Cyber Bulling is

a very common problem faced by teenagers who use FB a lot. It has become so common that

anybody can become a victim of bullying over FB. Bullying on FB is so easy, someone just

needs to post a harassing comment on someone photo or on status. People who are bullied are

likely to experience anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness. Unfortunately, such bullying

often is not noticed because victims can’t reveal this as they are embarrassed or afraid of further

bullying. Sometimes victims tend become anxious and lose confident. They may become less

active in class and, as a result, the bullying can hamper academic success. Therefore, bullying is

a problem that can significantly affect personal development of teenagers. Parents can personally

coach their childr en to avoid such situations of cyber bullying, but in today’s first paced life

parents are very busy always.

FB can ruin our personal relationships and specially love affairs. Sometimes it happens

that a general friend praises a girl and the girl’s boyfriend doesn’t feel happy about this. Even

sometimes partners feel insecure when outsiders praise about their partners. Sometimes a small

comment can create misunderstanding, confusion and lack of confidence on each other. In real

life such things do happen but the scopes are quite limited. In other cases, people sometimes

compare their partners with others and feel upset about their partners’ lacking. These type of

behaviors can seriously hurt other persons emotionally and create mental distress, anxiety and

frustration. Such silly things can also happen in lives of married couples and can result in

divorce. This is possible in real life but there is always some limitations of time thus comparison

is also very limited. It is also true that many happy couples met in FB and lived happily for

years. But in my observations, such cases are small in number and it is more likely that the

opposite happens more frequently.

http://www.stopbullying.gov/what-is-bullying/index.html

http://www.stopbullying.gov/what-is-bullying/index.html




Here comes the most important point- unhappiness. We all connect to FB for happiness

but in return many of us only get unhappiness in return. Kross et al (2013) ran an experiment and

found that FB makes people unhappy. He further said-“People feel left out, there is this

imagination or fantasy that other people's lives are better. Facebook keeps people in the know

about what other people are doing, but also about what they themselves are not doing”.

Basically, on FB everyone shows their positive part of life such as good achievements, exam

success etc but doesn’t express bad part of their life. But life is always a mix of good and bad

parts. When we see good parts of other people’s life we often become very sensitive and jealous.

We sometimes start to dislike ourselves and feel very uncomfortable and lack of confidence.

This creates a lot on dissatisfaction in our lives.

FB can destroy employee productivity significantly. Companies worldwide are

struggling to limit employee social network access at work. Emailing, text messaging, instant

messaging, and checking personal accounts on FB can create interruptions and hurt employee

productivity. When it is office hours, employees should focus on work only, using FB at office

can affect their concentration and result in errors and mistakes. This is not desirable for any

organization thus many organizations have banned use of FB in their office. Using FB at

workplace can also create security risk for companies because malware or other types of

threatening content can be shared over FB. On the other hand, FB can result in disasters for you

kids. Children who spend too much time online find it difficult to concentrate in class, and might

face problems to be attentive. The quality of homework is also badly affected by students'

willingness to spend their evenings on Facebook instead of studying

FB can compromise privacy of personal life. There is small gap between private and

public life in social networking. Once we put personal data, image or video on web site, we can




not control its distribution. Though we can set its privacy level in the profile but we are

not the administrator. Tomorrow our personal information may reach hands of parents, teacher,

employer, spouse, criminal or a marketing company. Social networking sites encourage people to

be more public about their personal lives. Because private details of our lives are sometimes

posted so easily, users sometimes are not very careful when talking about their private lives.

What's more, the things they post remain available indefinitely. FB encourages to provide real

names and other personal information such as birth date, current address, and telephone

number(s). Some sites also allow users to provide more information about themselves such as

interests, hobbies, favorite books or films, and even relationship status. These personal

information such as phone numbers and email ids could easily be used for criminal activities

such as hacking financial information etc. Thus posting personal information on FB can create

threat for our life. It has now become a common practice for HR departments and in different industries

to conduct an online background check on their prospective employee. A young man can post a photo

while drinking, on the FB; the image may actually hurt him if one of his prospective employers

can see it. In developed countries, sometimes lenders check FB profiles of borrowers. In such

cases, a private matter can affect borrower’s credit score and thus he sometimes faces difficulty

to get a loan.

In many ways it can be argues that FB itself is not created to be safe. One of the

important policy is regarding use of user data by third party applications, the 'Preapproved Third-

Party Websites and Applications' section of the Facebook privacy policy now states FB

occasionally need to provide General Information about you to preapproved third party websites

and applications. So clearly FB is sharing our information with others and there is no guarantee

that other parties will use due care to protect our confidential information.




It would be unjust if we miss various real benefits of FB. FB can be a good way to make

connections with people with similar interests and goals. It can help making new friends, it also

makes it possible to renew old ones. Thus, meeting people and staying connected with

classmates and friends is a major benefit of social networking sites. Facebook lets us connect to

different people from anywhere in the world, because almost every people these days are

familiar with Facebook .This gives us the opportunity to know more about their culture, values,

custom and tradition. Facebook is the most appropriate tool for finding Old friends. When

friends go away to any other place, we often don't get the chance to communicate with them. But

now Facebook gives us the opportunity to communicate with our Old friend very easily without

any cost. Surely, it is going to make you feel happy to see your old friend sharing some happy

photos from another part of the World.

There is no doubt that the points mentioned above are some of the very important

benefits and that affect our life very positively. But on a net basis I would always argue that FB’s

negative sides far outweigh positive sides. We should exercise due care while using FB so that

we are always safe. Even in many countries people observe Quit Facebook Day on May 31. I

think it is not too far that people in Bangladesh would also realize this and observe this day.




References:

1. BBC UK, (August 15, 2013), “Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves”

[Online], Available: http://www.bbc.com

2. Barricella N., “The Positive and Negative Effects of Facebook” [Online],

Available: http://nickbarricella.hubpages.com

3. Bgervais M., (September 11, 2013), “Negative Effects of Facebook”, [Online],

Available: http://newsactivist.com

4. Hernandez D. (2011), “Too much Facebook time may be unhealthy for kids”, [Online],

Available: http://articles.latimes.com

5. Jung B., “The Negative Effect of Social Media on Society and Individuals”, [Online],

Available: http://smallbusiness.chron.com

6. Konnikova M. , September 10, 2013, “How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy” [Online]

Available: www.newyorker.com

7. Kross E. et al, August 14, 2013, “Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-

Being in Young Adults” [Online], Available: http://www.plosone.org`

8. Lewis T., July 1, 2014, “Emotions Can Be Contagious on Online Social Networks”, [Online],

Available: http://www.scientificamerican.com

9. Medical News Today, “Social media: how does it really affect our mental health and well-

being?” [Online], Available: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com

10. Shaulis M. , “Facebook has negative effects on college students”, [Online]

Available: http://sai.calu.edu

http://newsactivist.com/en/users/mathieubgervais


http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/maria-konnikova


http://www.scientificamerican.com/author/tanya-lewis





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5 Ways Facebook Ruins Our Life_Bristi Saha