Friday, March 29, 2024

Can you give up Facebook?

It’s the first month of 2018 and New Year’s Resolutions are trending. Aside from the popular resolutions such as the vow to get healthy and to save more money, there’s a new resolution that has gained popularity in recent years. One clear indication that civilization has gone digital is this New Year’s Resolution: “I will stop using Facebook.”

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It’s been 13 years since Facebook was first unleashed to the world and, as of 2016, more than one billion people are said to be part of this ever-growing social network. Facebook has changed people’s lives. Then again, it has its dark side.

Facebook has been blamed for a number of things such as inadvertently encouraging narcissists to act up and fueling a culture of keeping up appearances that don’t reflect reality. More recently, Facebook has been slammed for serving as a “hatchery” for paid trolls who spread fake news. Of course, there are also scammers galore on the social media platform.

That’s why it’s no surprise that some people no longer want to face FB. There are some of us who can easily opt out of the cycle of posting and liking. However, as more and more companies use Facebook for their businesses and internal communication purposes, there may be people who cannot quit Facebook even if they want to.

In his article for The Huffington Post titled “You Can?’ Quit Facebook And Google Even If You Wanted To”  Paul Blumenthal points out: “People do not leave Facebook because everyone they know is on it.” He also adds that “making a decision to quit the service requires abandoning routine contact with a significant number of people.”

Right now, various studies assert that Facebook users spend an average of 40 minutes to one hour a day using Facebook. If we do the math using one hour a day as the base, that would mean that people spend 365 hours a year on FB. That’s equivalent to 15 days of your life.

Ultimately, people will have to make a decision about Facebook. Perhaps, they should be more mindful of the time they spend on it (unless, of course, it’s really part of their job) and learn how not to let it take over their lives.

After all, the so-called Facebook addiction epidemic can’t be blamed on the app alone. People are responsible for the things they click on.

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