I've been and advocate against Facebook as far as I can remember. Not specifically because my account was hacked or because of my personal data is "in the cloud" -however these do play a factor but for me, they are less significant in comparison to what the effects that social networks, especially Facebook have on the human in general. I like twitter so I'm not going to talk about Twitter, cool huh? I'm not here to talk about Twitter, I'm here to talk about Facebook.
Facebook... Social and peer pressure, drama, information, self perception, peer perception, friends, family the world: Facebook allows us to get tangled in our own social web of mess. We seem to enjoy interacting as a species. There is little doubt that we are distinctly social and emotional creatures. This is our evolutionary strength.
The problem with Facebook is that it let's us do it all-the-time, ever craving information, knowingness and understanding of what the world does in relation to ourselves. We bombard ourself with information that we want but it's effects on us are less evident. Stress and paranoia, drama introduce d by interpreting social messages and situations, ones portrayal of oneself is compared to hundreds if not thousands of people and we assess ourselves against our thousands of friends until we are basically just doing, feeling and being like everyone else and I think this causes stress and psychological trauma internally as we fight the age old adage," to be ourselve", unique and confident.
However I think these qualities and traits are overlapped by our perception of ourself in relation to our friends, why they do and feel. In normal cases this is fine, but extend this to hundreds If not thousands of potential ways to query and be informed about how others do things and then we'll tend to do things like them. It's not healthy, not at that scale, more importantly.
With facebook, social boundaries are broken, family, friends and aquintances suddenly share the floor, the same problems and you're caught up in the middle of this super flux of information that never stops changing, never stops coming and going, and because we crave information, like a drug we fuel on it to sustain that which we aren't confident about in your own minds and thus pursue opinions, characteristics and traits that are not our own but seem correct.
Take for example, I saw a family member kiss another girl in a photo, it was published, open to everyone I know. While there is essentially nothing wrong with it, it opens the flood gates to speculation, interpretation, gossip and a whole trove of drama which can potentially be debilitating. The pressure being seen doing things, being in pictures - seeing other people do it... Couple that with friend and family, ex's and partners just brings a wealth of problems.
I'm also talking about the people you don't want to know, but know we can know more about and I'm talking about the desire to dig deeper into pockets of information that you'd otherwise leave alone because the effort to do so outweighed the doing. Now the doing it is easy, we do it and we can't escape it.
Its quite possible that this perspective is distinctly unique and mine alone but somehow I can't help but think that their are elements that ring ever so clearly and apparently.
Obviously like all things, if you are disciplined, do everything in moderation and are not influenced by perception and friends, you might be alright.
For the rest of us, I think Facebook is one more way of injecting what you don't need in life straight into out veins.
Somewhat dramatic perhaps but potentially true.
Facebook... Social and peer pressure, drama, information, self perception, peer perception, friends, family the world: Facebook allows us to get tangled in our own social web of mess. We seem to enjoy interacting as a species. There is little doubt that we are distinctly social and emotional creatures. This is our evolutionary strength.
The problem with Facebook is that it let's us do it all-the-time, ever craving information, knowingness and understanding of what the world does in relation to ourselves. We bombard ourself with information that we want but it's effects on us are less evident. Stress and paranoia, drama introduce d by interpreting social messages and situations, ones portrayal of oneself is compared to hundreds if not thousands of people and we assess ourselves against our thousands of friends until we are basically just doing, feeling and being like everyone else and I think this causes stress and psychological trauma internally as we fight the age old adage," to be ourselve", unique and confident.
However I think these qualities and traits are overlapped by our perception of ourself in relation to our friends, why they do and feel. In normal cases this is fine, but extend this to hundreds If not thousands of potential ways to query and be informed about how others do things and then we'll tend to do things like them. It's not healthy, not at that scale, more importantly.
With facebook, social boundaries are broken, family, friends and aquintances suddenly share the floor, the same problems and you're caught up in the middle of this super flux of information that never stops changing, never stops coming and going, and because we crave information, like a drug we fuel on it to sustain that which we aren't confident about in your own minds and thus pursue opinions, characteristics and traits that are not our own but seem correct.
Take for example, I saw a family member kiss another girl in a photo, it was published, open to everyone I know. While there is essentially nothing wrong with it, it opens the flood gates to speculation, interpretation, gossip and a whole trove of drama which can potentially be debilitating. The pressure being seen doing things, being in pictures - seeing other people do it... Couple that with friend and family, ex's and partners just brings a wealth of problems.
I'm also talking about the people you don't want to know, but know we can know more about and I'm talking about the desire to dig deeper into pockets of information that you'd otherwise leave alone because the effort to do so outweighed the doing. Now the doing it is easy, we do it and we can't escape it.
Its quite possible that this perspective is distinctly unique and mine alone but somehow I can't help but think that their are elements that ring ever so clearly and apparently.
Obviously like all things, if you are disciplined, do everything in moderation and are not influenced by perception and friends, you might be alright.
For the rest of us, I think Facebook is one more way of injecting what you don't need in life straight into out veins.
Somewhat dramatic perhaps but potentially true.