Social Networks – An Addiction

Having wasted the better part of the morning, and most mornings, staring at Facebook and bringing up-to-date my MySpace, I can accept that social networks are addicting and can dissipate hours and hours in a day. I can also go back to when I was working a regular office job and a large part of the day was whiled away looking for who logged in, checking it like it was the stock exchange. Every now and then I get responses from acquaintances I haven’t spoken to in years or who I almost don’t know anymore, in addition to the regular circle of friends who regularly monitor each other’s pages as if it was their [job|duty} to do so.

Psychiatrists go as far as saying that today individuals extend their own personalities through their Internet presences. To put it differently, Facebook and MySpace have become a sense of who we really are as individuals. I suppose this is true, as it is a place we decide what people see, and have no trouble allowing people all across the world watch in order to obtain updates as to who we are and what we are doing. Nevertheless there are those who spend over 30-40 hours on the internet a week on such sites, and they are dependent. People have expected the internet to substitute other recreational avenues of their lives. Unfortunately for many of today’s youth, this means a fall in physical pursuits, and for adults it can imply a fall in social interaction with their friends and/or family.

  They say opportunity creates the criminal,’ but in this situation, ‘social networks make the stalker.’ The quantity of information one can come across on another person makes it easy to spy on their every action. Yes it is that person, who posts pictures and approves being tagged in others, as well as posting information, but everyone also posts on walls and those messages are [public|open} but may not be pre-approved by the member before they go live. People quickly get dependent on following someone once they find someone else is writing on their wall, or that they have put up new images. Tabbed browsing, email notifications, and mobile applications, all serve the social network dependent, making it [easier|more conceivable} for them to constantly be looking at their profiles and others’ as well. Experts advise laying down time limits, and generally exercising self discipline against repeatedly checking or signing up for email alerts, and not to buy mobile apps for the social networks.