Facebook

I have a love-hate affair with Facebook.

With friends and family all around from the farthest east to the farthest west, Facebook truly Untitledhelps me to keep in touch with them all. But hadn’t Facebook been there, wouldn’t I have found other ways to keep in touch with them if I really wanted to?

On our Facebook friend-list we have everyone from our kindergarten friends to the Professors at college. In real-life, would we be actually sharing details of our honey-moon trip with our Professors or would we be comfortable showing recent pictures of our family/extended relatives with people whose sole contact with us was only sharing the same class during Kindergarten? So why do we think it is alright to do so on Facebook ? The lines of privacy have slowly blurred.

Have you ever come across this situation where you meet a friend after a long time and have this being interjected in to your conversations : ” Yeah, I came across your pics on XYZ/s wedding album/ tagged pics etc. So how was the function/trip? ” and so on and so forth. Knowing details about another person’s life without them necessarily having told us ! I for one find it so creepy.

Having been a consistent user from 2007-11, I got irked by the updates then on. Do we really need to know when Sara likes another photo or Jai comments on an album? Information-overloaded, surely ! We end up comparing our lives with those happy faces we see on our FB walls, forgetting that only the best moments come on to FB updates. Loss, failure, breakups, unemployment, quarter-life crisis – though not glamorous for FB walls are very common in every person’s life !

For the people who constantly update photos of their young kids in all poses 24/7, did they forget – every child has a right to privacy. What if in 10 years, the child asks back ” Mom, why is that embarrassing picture of mine, online?” because everything that we update ceases to be in our control the minute we post them online. Also for people who updates 183983274 photos for 365 days after their engagement/wedding haven’t realized actually not many are interested ? Let’s not reduce our happiness on the special day to meager likes/ comments from some “ facebook friends“. People really involved in our life will be their on our big day, no matter what !

I personally know of relationships destroyed due to Facebook usage. Kindling of past affairs while being in a serious relationship seems to be a common occurrence nowadays, thanks to Facebook.

Another behaviour Facebook promotes is Narcissism. Constant upload of selfies, status updates of whereabouts, (and now “feeling”), opinions on everything under the sun, irrelevant or not are habits that promote giving undue self importance.

..but to put in perspective, it is not merely Facebook that is evil, but the way we use that turns it out to be good or evil. In the end it narrows down to an individual’s personal choice and ethics.

How many hours do you spend on Facebook? Opinions?

( Linking it to ABC Wednesday and NaBloPoMo)

(EDIT : …. and so I ranted on the day Facebook bought Whatsapp for $19 billion. )

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0 Replies to “Facebook”

  1. Couldn’t agree more. Well said. I ‘suspended’ my Facebook account 27th last month and have been more productive (blogging). I found myself following ‘likes’ ‘shares’ and comment trails to no other purpose than curiosity; cringe-worth, eeuw! Three weeks without FB I’m more productive and my headspace is not cluttered with snippets of useless information about peoples’ lives about which I neither care nor have any interest in (so why then was I lurking, good question). It’s very liberating.

  2. Well, I’m there, but I definitely agree with love/hate. Anything that demands I do something, “Like if you love your mother,” Is something I NEVER do!
    ROG, ABCW

  3. I have to say I’m not the biggest fan of all the constant updates and the wall etc BUT I have had some awesome Facebook moments when someone I know has visited Berlin and we only knew we were in the same city because of status updates etc. Plus it is great for getting a blog’s information out to the masses. I feel I would have lost touch with a lot of people without it, but nothing beats actually spending time with your friends 🙂

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