Facebook is considered one of the most popular social networking websites with more than 350 million active users worldwide. It helps individuals connect with friends, and family members around the globe, and share other media. Just like its positive factors, nowadays it does account for many negative aspects which could not be irreversible.
Out of numerous negative characteristics, putting one in a dangerous situation, depression and loss of sleep are the common ones. At a glance, one considers Facebook as an enjoyable and intriguing website, but having an addiction to it may have other fatal effects easy to cope with life-changing or unhealthy activities and in perceptive to minuscule. The paper will analyze the negative effects of excessive Facebook usage.
In today’s society, it is common for individuals to share different posts related to hotly debated topics and other issues on the Facebook platform. That particular information is mostly shared from unreliable sources as a result there was more chance of illogical debate upon an issue. Because of such irrational arguments, the disparities among the active users also increased, and there might be a chance that such issues might become international. Similarly, other options on Facebook force its users to act unnaturally, because the main satisfaction people receive from Facebook, is the “likes” and the appreciation received from other people online. Such activities make them rely upon them and consider them discrete in nature, impacting their minds.
Millions of user profiles are been registered on Facebook. Many of those profiles are fake, and such accounts are used for different purposes like advertising and increasing their friends list to be more popular, etc. Using different profiles, these individuals represent split nature behavior like they will not act as themselves and will alter how they act because they would be thinking of their impression on other people. Similarly, many users need to feel accepted or “liked.” They would act differently in order to feel more accepted, by not acting as themselves, which will then therefore, alter people who are susceptible and will make them act the same way that a certain desirable trend acts, which could change a large amount of people’s personalities to undesirable ones.
From a psychological perspective, the personalities of such addictive users make them susceptible to being easily controlled by other people and they would act based on what they would think someone else would do, instead of acting based on their morals and decisions, which they would not have anymore. There would then be a mass group of people that would follow a certain trend, which could then be easily used and controlled by the media and businesses inhumanely and unnaturally.
Correspondingly, using this social media website, individuals think more rationally than they behave in their daily routine interactions. Most of the time it forces an individual to judge someone’s profile. So, people who create their profiles make themselves look how they want to look but not who they are. Creating a profile, makes people create their personality in an unnatural way, by letting other people decide how they want to look and act, in order to appeal to other people online, since information that people release on Facebook is an online display of entertainment, for other users to see. So, one would consider it unethical not only to have different (split) accounts but also to be judgmental based on the profiles of others.
There is no doubt that Facebook is extremely addictive, and many individuals in society spend much of their time on Facebook. It develops an ache to belong because there are so many people who are users. Once you become a user of Facebook, there are a few factors that create the addiction. One of the main factors was that one feel the need to log on and see what is occurring in the online community. So, they spend a lot of time in waste and want to know what is happening in other people’s lives.
The desire to compare ourselves to others is natural, but Facebook makes comparing extremely accessible and easy. It was similar to feeling the need to communicate and hang out with others, except users are virtually communicating. When one has friends on Facebook, they usually are curious about what those friends have been doing in the past, where they have been, or what they have been posting on their wall. Similarly, when someone is curious about someone on Facebook, they could be trapped and addicted until they find out enough information about that particular person that they would be curious about. This curiosity makes individuals not only bound to the usage of this socializing website but also greatly impacts their thoughts and perceptions based on other people’s profile activity.
Many individuals didn’t have a social life outside their homes. They attached more towards Facebook, than to hang out with other beings within society. They believe they are lonely and only Facebook has a cure for their loneliness. Similarly, communicating virtually online with friends was the same satisfaction as being lonely and hanging out with a friend and communicating with them physically. Such individuals share their feelings of joy, happiness, and melancholy on this website to sympathize with others they didn’t even know. In this regard, one would consider it more damaging to an individual’s perception and beliefs because their whole life depends upon the imagination or reality of life within a particular environment.
According to many psychologists and philosophers, socializing networking websites such as Facebook have created many psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia, sleep disorders, ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders (Social Media). In perceptive to Ryan, Facebook is so addictive because when one receives a new notification, friend request, or message, their brain releases dopamine (Ryan), a neurotransmitter, that provides a message to the brain in the sense of having a reward feeling or pleasure. So, by using Facebook, dopamine is naturally released, which still not only creates an addiction but has negative side effects, and psychological disorders on that particular individual (Bozarth 6).
In the end, one concludes that despite having certain uses, such as communication integration for individuals with different beliefs, Facebook also has many side effects. Facebook not only reduces the individual’s social skills, but there is also a chance that such individuals might not be able to communicate with each other as easily and clearly. Similarly, many personal and professional individuals are ruining their because of getting addicted to Facebook. Likewise, in the concluding statement, one measure is that the use of Facebook negatively impacts how we communicate with each other naturally in a person-to-person aspect, but also reduces our social skills and keeps us distracted throughout our days and lives.
