Facebook Addiction.
You can’t snort it. You can’t drink it. You can’t inhale it or hump it or throw it into the back of your gullet via a shot glass.
Yet, this socially active spider web of interconnectivity has a powerful hold on millions and millions of people.
It has become a global Jones that could be dangerous.
According to Norwegian researchers, Facebook is addictive like cocaine.
FB is crack in a back alley to a stumbling derelict.
Facebook is a shot of booze the morning after a hard night of drinking to an alcoholic.
Facebook is the internet equivalent of key lime pie after a turkey dinner when you should have opted for a pickle juice colon cleanse.
According to the Bergen University Facebook Addiction Scale, yeah I said it – so what – there are six warning signs to Facebook addiction.
If you can answer yes to four or more, the experts say you may need a 12 step program.
Wow a Facebook 12 step program. What is the world coming to?
Is it possible to be addicted to something that exists in an invisible spectrum of realization? Can you be addicted to something that cannot be touched or smelled or digested?
Apparently so, and the power of Facebook is palpable.
Half a billion people are linked to this ether. It’s the place you go to stalk your ex lover, the place you go to view your friend’s Saturday night. It’s the landing pad for your professions and pronouncements and nonsensical pontifications.
Likes. Dislikes. Does FB empower you? Does FB make you feel like you’re not alone? Does it give you a voice, does it give your point of view amplification. Does it give you a reason to get up in the morning.
“The use of Facebook has increased rapidly,” Cecilie Schou Andreassen, a doctor of psychology at the University of Bergen said.
“We are dealing with a subdivision of Internet addiction connected to social media,” she said.
And here is a shocker; according to the study, it occurs more regularly among young users who are anxious and socially insecure.
Why is that?
Because the study says, anxious people find it easier to communicate via social media than face to face.
How ironic? People who would rather Facebook can’t communicate face to face.
So are you an addict?
Remember, according to the survey 4 yes votes and you got a problem.
1. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about facebook or plan on how to use Facebook?
2. do you feel an urge to use Facebook more and more?
3. do you use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems?
4. Have you tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
5. Do you become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from
using Facebook
6. Do you use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact
on your job/studies?
I think you could inter-change the word Facebook and cocaine or Facebook and alcohol and it rings true.
I am not much for Facebook. I personally don’t care what you had for breakfast or how cute you look in coveralls or how what your political ramblings might be.
But I can see how someone might gravitate to the light of something that fills a void.
The only way to break an addiction is to beat it.
Step on the pipe. Put down the booze. And when it comes to Facebook….
Try “unfriending” people you don’t know. Try closing your lap top and taking your dog for a walk. Try uninstalling the Facebook app on your smart phone.
Life’s too short to be addicted to anything, especially something as unimportant as Facebook.
Life’s crazy.™