Social networks like Face Book are addictive & detrimental to society

In 2009, CNN published an article telling a story of a mother so addicted to FB that her daughter had to send an email, to get her mothers attention, long enough to ask for help with her home work! Powerful new technologies provide great benefits, but they also change the way we live and not always in ways that everyone likes.

What is addiction? Any habit which cannot be kicked And what is an obsession? besotted, infatuated, intoxicated The reasons for obsession could be : 1)Persistent games:FB has games that continue to evolve & change even when you are logged out.

2)New Content:FB account receives a constant trickle of new content, status updates, pictures & relationships changes

3)Small Time investment: statistics says that people at an average are on FB 54mins a day. No lengthy time investment. Upload pictures,read, reply to messages all in STI. 4)Social validation: According to a research in 2011, an average FB users have 130 friends. You need to put only your best picture, best profile & feel good about all the attention you get. In real life, people may not have so many friends. 5)Access to personal lives : People,whom you hardly know, have access to your profile & they can misuse it to collect information about ones personal life.

Let us look at the positives

Easier contacts with friends Updates on kith and kins activity Improved chances to make new friends globally

To create a community
world becomes a smaller space

Networking and sharing ideas

Info is power Advertisers are able to target the niche section

Level of awareness a) during protests b) during natural calamities For example take Egypt : Ghonim tapped into sheer frustration, started putting his thoughts on Face Book. 2 minutes later, 300 people joined it. 3 months later, the number had grown to 250,000 .What bubbled up online inevitably spilled on to streets and culminated into a massive & historic rally at Tahir Square, Cairo. We are all what Khalid said helped ignite an uprising that led to the resignation of Prez Mubarak, which showed that The power of people is greater than the power of people in power

Everything on this earth has a flip side

How Shiv sainiks harrased two girls for their FB quotes. Thats atrocious! FB is Gossipy. Sharing personal details can be dangerous .

FB can harm moral values ( no time for compassion, meeting friends where people can define their morals are taken over by news snippets and fast moving social networking. It is far removed from people sitting on the porch and talking to friends)

Digital media direct , users away from traditional avenues for learning about humanity such as Literature or face to face social interactions Children could be particularly vulnerable since their brains are still developing Everyone (correctly) assumes that you are an egocentric narcissist. Thousands of friends mean none in the true sense Office productivity is affected. Malware is a primary security concerns for businesses.

Conclusion
I am , by disposition, a technology optimist believing that bad things will be filtered out over time and net benefits will emerge. But in the early stages of technology , the buyer must beware!