Is Facebook antisocial? I think so
Is Facebook antisocial? To some the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. For these rare people who never followed the crowd, who never got a Facebook or Twitter account, such “social” tools represent the end to kinder gentler days when longing and anticipation were part of social interaction. Everything you ever wanted to know or were curious to know about a friend, a loved one, or a work colleague, is now only a click away.
I remember a time when, much like today, people were too busy to keep in touch with friends on a daily or even weekly basis. Then, something would trigger in us a certain memory and we would remember that we hadn’t seen or talked to a certain friend for a long time. The instinct back then was to pick up the telephone and give that friend a call. Eagerly we listened to hear their news, we warmly ask after them and their families. Facebook, some say, killed all that.
Of course there are many people who are still not on Facebook and they are the lucky ones, because they don’t have to worry about whether their friends like their posts and status updates or not, or whether they should like or comment on their friends’ posts and status updates or not. They don’t have to compare themselves to their friends on an hourly basis to see whose online presence is more active and more fulfilling.
The sheer number of friends that some very ordinary people (i.e. not celebrities or politicians) have on Facebook can be staggering and can go as high as a thousand or more. Of course, the number of friends people have on Facebook, the number of witty comments or funny posts they put up, and the amount of comments they stir up, is a point of pride for many facebookers and it is also the psychological pay off.
“I think Facebook is terribly anti-social,” said a good friend of mine recently. “It sounds like hell.” And in some respects it is that way and more. Facebook gives you the illusion of connectivity, of being in touch with friends, but the fact is we have substituted human contact with Facebook. Our faces are our most valuable networking tool, and we rarely show it any more. Hitting the ‘Like’ button, or making a two word comment and a smiley face on a friend’s post or status update has become our substitute for person to person interaction.
To the gregarious and psychologically hardy among us, Facebook is just an extra tool to use. But for the introverted, highly sensitive, and mentally fragile among us, Facebook is an addiction, a
manifest need for validation, one that drives such people to log on for hours at a time, make cute or witty comments, ‘poke’ someone, or ‘like’ something, or put up a funny picture. We all know them and we see them often when we log on, ‘the regulars’, but we rarely chat with them unless we want something from them. After all, what are we going to talk about, their latest news? We know all that already, we read it on Facebook!
Human beings have a need to be liked and the more fragile among us, need to be reminded that we are ‘liked’ more often that others. I know I’ve been there.
So, is Facebook a dangerous addiction and a tool designed to make us all feel more disconnected rather than connected? Or, is it just a useful internet tool that we humans just abuse and misuse for our own ends?
Even fellow journalists expressed unease at using Facebook even though they do so regularly as part of their jobs. “It’s cold and impersonal. I only got an account to stay in touch with friends. But I don’t like that anyone can see your profile and see who your friends are and how many you have,” one female colleague said. There are certainly privacy issues surrounding Facebook, but the issue of privacy goes deeper than that, it’s the fact that facebook is so open and unrestricted I guess that makes me feel uneasy.
Another aspect of Facebook is that business and personal lives get intertwined in such a way that is not healthy in the least. You can’t stop someone searching the net to see if you have a Facebook account or not. Once a long forgotten acquaintance asks to be your friend on FB, you are stuck, if you refuse to add him, that could be perceived as rude, if you do add him, then you have one extra friend from the hundreds you have that you neither talk to, nor chat with, nor communicate with in any way whatsoever because you have so little in common. This person and hundreds more like him in your friends list are then free to see every status update you post, every picture, every joke, everything in fact.
We all have moments or bouts of ‘online silliness’ that we would rather no one sees or reads, or at least no one who does not know us personally and understand our temperaments. But once you upload and click, it’s out of your hands.
Teenagers today have it worst of all. In an online article by David Cohen titled ‘Teens’ Behavior On Facebook Is Antisocial: Report’, the author points to the challenges facing teens today, most important of all is the relentlessness of their online world: “Being online is 24/7 and part of being a teen growing up: Phones are buzzing, Facebook alerts are popping, and there doesn’t seem to be much relief or refuge for kids anymore.”
One recent legal case in Belfast, Northern Ireland, brought another issue to light, that of cyber bullying via Facebook and other social media. An employee of a certain company was dismissed after his comments about another employee on Facebook were deemed sexual harassment. In a post on The Guardian’s work blog, which tackles all matters relating to work and career, Philip Landau, a London-based employment lawyer, makes it clear that employers can use what you say or write on Facebook against you.
I remember a time when, much like today, people were too busy to keep in touch with friends on a daily or even weekly basis. Then, something would trigger in us a certain memory and we would remember that we hadn’t seen or talked to a certain friend for a long time. The instinct back then was to pick up the telephone and give that friend a call. Eagerly we listened to hear their news, we warmly ask after them and their families. Facebook, some say, killed all that.
Of course there are many people who are still not on Facebook and they are the lucky ones, because they don’t have to worry about whether their friends like their posts and status updates or not, or whether they should like or comment on their friends’ posts and status updates or not. They don’t have to compare themselves to their friends on an hourly basis to see whose online presence is more active and more fulfilling.
The sheer number of friends that some very ordinary people (i.e. not celebrities or politicians) have on Facebook can be staggering and can go as high as a thousand or more. Of course, the number of friends people have on Facebook, the number of witty comments or funny posts they put up, and the amount of comments they stir up, is a point of pride for many facebookers and it is also the psychological pay off.
“I think Facebook is terribly anti-social,” said a good friend of mine recently. “It sounds like hell.” And in some respects it is that way and more. Facebook gives you the illusion of connectivity, of being in touch with friends, but the fact is we have substituted human contact with Facebook. Our faces are our most valuable networking tool, and we rarely show it any more. Hitting the ‘Like’ button, or making a two word comment and a smiley face on a friend’s post or status update has become our substitute for person to person interaction.
To the gregarious and psychologically hardy among us, Facebook is just an extra tool to use. But for the introverted, highly sensitive, and mentally fragile among us, Facebook is an addiction, a
manifest need for validation, one that drives such people to log on for hours at a time, make cute or witty comments, ‘poke’ someone, or ‘like’ something, or put up a funny picture. We all know them and we see them often when we log on, ‘the regulars’, but we rarely chat with them unless we want something from them. After all, what are we going to talk about, their latest news? We know all that already, we read it on Facebook!
Human beings have a need to be liked and the more fragile among us, need to be reminded that we are ‘liked’ more often that others. I know I’ve been there.
So, is Facebook a dangerous addiction and a tool designed to make us all feel more disconnected rather than connected? Or, is it just a useful internet tool that we humans just abuse and misuse for our own ends?
Even fellow journalists expressed unease at using Facebook even though they do so regularly as part of their jobs. “It’s cold and impersonal. I only got an account to stay in touch with friends. But I don’t like that anyone can see your profile and see who your friends are and how many you have,” one female colleague said. There are certainly privacy issues surrounding Facebook, but the issue of privacy goes deeper than that, it’s the fact that facebook is so open and unrestricted I guess that makes me feel uneasy.
Another aspect of Facebook is that business and personal lives get intertwined in such a way that is not healthy in the least. You can’t stop someone searching the net to see if you have a Facebook account or not. Once a long forgotten acquaintance asks to be your friend on FB, you are stuck, if you refuse to add him, that could be perceived as rude, if you do add him, then you have one extra friend from the hundreds you have that you neither talk to, nor chat with, nor communicate with in any way whatsoever because you have so little in common. This person and hundreds more like him in your friends list are then free to see every status update you post, every picture, every joke, everything in fact.
We all have moments or bouts of ‘online silliness’ that we would rather no one sees or reads, or at least no one who does not know us personally and understand our temperaments. But once you upload and click, it’s out of your hands.
Teenagers today have it worst of all. In an online article by David Cohen titled ‘Teens’ Behavior On Facebook Is Antisocial: Report’, the author points to the challenges facing teens today, most important of all is the relentlessness of their online world: “Being online is 24/7 and part of being a teen growing up: Phones are buzzing, Facebook alerts are popping, and there doesn’t seem to be much relief or refuge for kids anymore.”
One recent legal case in Belfast, Northern Ireland, brought another issue to light, that of cyber bullying via Facebook and other social media. An employee of a certain company was dismissed after his comments about another employee on Facebook were deemed sexual harassment. In a post on The Guardian’s work blog, which tackles all matters relating to work and career, Philip Landau, a London-based employment lawyer, makes it clear that employers can use what you say or write on Facebook against you.
Companies already monitor employees online activity, and in many cases accessing Facebook or Twitter from work is forbidden, and for good reason. Too many people, too often have ‘put their foot in it’ one too many times in cyber space and found out to their detriment that the price they pay is not ‘virtual’ by rather very ‘real world’ and very costly.
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