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Facebook should be banned
Facebook is the platform for sharing information and communicating with our peers. It gives us an outlet for communicating with the rest of the world and feel like a closer community despite being miles away from each other. Facebook is also a social media portal that provides us with memes and entertainment on a daily basis.
In the post-modern era, almost every single person no matter what their social stature, maintains a Facebook account. It is imperative for youngsters to wake up in the morning and log in to their Facebook handle. A session of endless scrolling through the newsfeed, opening up chats and having conversations with people one knows or may not know, soon follows.
In a nutshell, Facebook has become an integral part of our lives all too soon, and now it has gained notoriety due to its highly addictive nature, especially for the youths of today.
A Brief History on the discovery of Facebook
Founded originally in India, Facebook was created by Harvard University sophomore student Mark Zuckerberg, along with some of his fellow students and roommates hailing from the same University. It quickly gained mass popularity and became one among the four giant companies of the world, namely Google, Amazon, and Apple.
While still a sophomore, Zuckerberg used his software development and coding skills to create a virtual platform called Facebook, limited to only students of Harvard University, USA. Then he decided to extend the platform to reach other surrounding Universities such as Yale and Stanford.
It spread like wildfire and within a span of a few weeks, everyone everywhere was talking about this new social media platform and using it. People were beginning to get addicted to it as it brought them closer within the perimeters of other’s lives. It made communication easy and entertaining, and it provided everybody the opportunity to know everybody, look them up, and access their personal information.
The invention of Facebook turned Mark Zuckerberg into a billionaire overnight. The portal became a multi million dollar industry in no time. It not only earned its owners fame and recognition but also lead to the development of other social media portals, inspiring developers all over the world. It paved a way to the development of social media as the primal source of entertainment for the millennials.
Ill-effects of using Facebook
Facebook has lead to mass addiction of millennials
Following the invention of Facebook, it has to lead the millennials to fall prey of addiction and dependency on Facebook as a portal for communication, and most importantly, entertainment.
Breach of Privacy
Facebook allows people to access information that is very personal. It gives us an insight into the daily lives of others. That is it gives us information on their day to day activities, the places they frequent, their friends and relatives, their hobbies and personal interests, their relationship status, etc. This, although useful in certain ways, can however lead to a breach of privacy for people who exploit these to gain information on others with a primary motive of using such information to cause them harm.
A false sense of fame and belongingness
Facebook gives its users a false sense of popularity. The users get addicted primarily since they feel as though they are loved and wanted among a wide mass of people and they have a fan-following of some kind. People turn into semi-celebrities on social media which gives a sense of pseudo-belongingness. But suffices to say that it is all a farce. Social media acceptance and popularity means nothing in reality, and in real life, these people lose their sense of judgment and find it very difficult to cope.
The tendency of finding it difficult to socialize
Socializing is an important activity, not only in our work sphere but also in our educational sphere. It is the ability to form allies through direct communication and two way exchange of words and information among people to form some kind of a relationship with them. People using Facebook as a medium for communication at all times resort to it again and again as they find it as an easy medium to display and communicate their thoughts and ideas.
However, due to being hooked on to a virtual medium of communication at all times, Facebook prevents its users from being capable of communicating in real life scenarios and making real life bonds with people.
They lack the basic ability to convey their thoughts and ideas directly to people in front of them, outside the virtual world. In such situations, they have the involuntary tendency of becoming nervous or shaky, or in general, they just shut people out and avoid social events and gatherings altogether.
Distancing oneself from family and friends
Family and friends are people who stand by us no matter what. They are those few people who love and understand us and support us in our daily ventures. However, millennials, while trying to get in touch with the wider world through Facebook, are distancing themselves from their immediate surroundings and people who are close to them.
They shut these people out and chase those whom they barely even know or are familiar with. This, in turn, weakens their bonds with their family and friends, thereby distancing them from these individuals.
Distraction from studies
Another very important ill-effect of usage of Facebook is the distraction it causes towards studies. Facebook is not only an addiction among the youths but also young children, as early as 12 years of age. These children are open to manipulation and become prime addicts of social media. They indulge in Facebook during their study hours and exploit it utilising the time they should use to enrich their knowledge and strengthen their basic education. These youth and children fail to live up to their true potentials due to social media addiction hampering their thinking process.
Impairment of activities
Due to social media indulgence, it has lead to impairment in the ability to be active for most of the teens, youths, and children who use it. This leads to more and more people sitting on their sofa or bed like couch-potatoes. This leads to a rise in the rate of obesity and certain weaknesses.
Depression and sleep loss
Facebook can also lead to social media notoriety or negative impacts that can rapidly lead to a slip into a depression that is often unnoticeable. Also, people indulging in Facebook for long hours, especially at night, causes sleep loss and the tendency of insomnia, which makes them feel an intense urge of indulging in the portal throughout the night, without any sleep.
Hampering romantic relationships
Many people like the social attention they can get just from being on social media and posting information about themselves up on social network sites. Some other people just get a Facebook account to feel more connected to their friends and to people in general. Sense of belongingness to an individual is an obvious psychological need, yet more so when a person is always working with little time for socializing and to get together with friends.
With this in mind, tweeting on Twitter, posting our whereabouts last night on Facebook to provoke attention from friends and acquaintances, and mentioning relationship statuses and changes in it (single, in a relationship, its complicated, married, etc.) brings about a sort of psychological satisfaction in us as we find a false sense of validation among people we barely even know. Others just use Facebook to pass the time when there is time to kill from boredom.
However, the same medicine for a sense of belongingness or boredom can become the worst enemy to people in romantic relationships and even to married couples. For example, sending inappropriate texts or messages to a person of the opposite sex or receiving them can make another partner jealous and distrustful of his or her partner.
Not only that, Facebook gives us an open opportunity to get in touch with so many different people of our interest all at the same time. This provides us with several options to choose from and find a partner that ticks all the right points on our checklist. This, however, is detrimental to human relationships as due to innumerable options available, people do not feel the need to take relationships seriously or work things out with their partners.
Due to the following reasons, Facebook should be banned, and awareness should be preached among the youths to stop them from manhandling the internet.