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Hussein Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1102 or 04/19/2012 Facebook Addiction.

The first website that had this huge popularity from Social Networking was Facebook. It all began with an idea that a local student in Harvard University Mark Zuckerberg had about making a website that would make the communication between Harvard students much easier and flexible where the students could share their photos and information with others. After Facebook became more popular and used more for fun and self-pleasure, other than using it for University alone, Mark Zuckerberg expanded Facebook to let it be used by other Universities alone. Eventually in 2004 after Mark Zuckerberg has seen that Facebook become such a popular site, he mad Facebook as a public site and to be used for anybody that wishes to make an account for Facebook. As soon as Facebook became a public site in 2006 alone a 100million people created an account for them in Facebook. And in 2011, 700 million(Facebook history) more people created an account for themselves in Facebook.

Social Network has become a big deal for most of people. A lot would consider that Social Network is a daily life routine, were a large amount of people cannot imagine their lives without logging in their Social Network account every second. After Facebook became a huge interest for a lot of people, a huge variety of different Social Networks other than Facebook were created e.g. Twitter, MySpace, Skype and lots more. Eventually a great numbers of people have

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admitted that they have reached a point where they have no control over themselves and they have reached a point where they honestly could call themselves a Facebook addict judging on how frequent they login to their account and how much time they spend in Social Network . A lot of people became concern about themselves becoming a Social Network addict. Unfortunately Facebook addiction has become a global problem that people around the world are suffering from and its becoming hard to manage. Most people in Australia spend an average of 8 hours a month on Facebook alone. This is why they were said to be the leading countries that use Social Network excessively more than any country in earth. But when can we say that Social Network is causing a serious problem to our community? Psychologist Dr.Simon of Neo Psychology says: It's problematic when you think about it frequently, to the point of distraction, when not online, and when you're focused more on your online relationship time than the realtime, face-to-face experiences with people(42) But is Social Network really addictive or is it just a bad habit? A lot of theories and different explanations tried to answer this question. One of those theories is that the medical society finds it difficult to say that Social Network is addictive .But rather its more of a bad habit that people may want to control or preferably leave .Judging from the major consequences on the mind and body may appear concerning the eyes, brain function that are put to risk. When can we tell that our usage is more of addicted use than a habit? Psychologist Meredith Fuller explains by saying There's a concern if you feel mildly depressed or distressed if you're not able to check in online several times a day, or when you lose yourself in your social media for hours (ADDICTED TO FACEBOOK By: THOMSON, JODIE).

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But as time passes more and more people create new accounts in the Social Network sites and especially Facebook. Studies show that in 2010, 350million people have accounts in Facebook worldwide. Who in total spend around 10 billion minutes every day in Facebook! According to Stanford University in California research records, it is shown that in every 8 American people there is at least one person that suffers Social Network addiction. Also according to Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea have a percent of 30% of their teens becoming a Facebook addict. Furthermore, a recent company study shows with 1000 workers , found that 8% of their employees have been dismissed due their behavior in sites such as Facebook. Those records are both frightening and dreadful, because it means that our teens and future society are heading towards a dark and depressing and unpromising end.

A research has been taken by Hardie Richards (senior lecturer in psychology at Swinburne University of Technology) and Ming Yi Tee (postgraduate psychology student at Swinburne University of Technology). Their main goal of this study was to find the amount of people that were addict to Social Network in relative to a suitable portion of ordinary people. Also their trying to find what are the main reasons of becoming a Social Network addict from various aspects e.g. emotional loneliness, social anxiety , age , sex etc. To begin the research they took 96 respondents (44 males and 49 females) with different ages from 18 to 72. To begin the examination theyve let each one enter a room alone and made them answer an online survey. The survey had a couple of questions that targeted that targeted various ranges of their lives. One of those questions was lack of control and neglect of social life, rate from 1(as very low) to 5(as very high) (Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society). The results were extremely shocking were more than half of the

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participants that were classified as over users spend around 35.70 hours per week on the internet, and only 8 people that were classified as addicts were spending 68.88 hours weekly on the internet. Furthermore, the Social Network addict had the highest number in Neuroticism, Social Anxiety and Emotional Loneliness. Also they had the lowest numbers in Extraversion. Most of the heavy Social Network users were people under 24 and nearly all of the Social Network addicts were under 22. Overall most of the Social Network addicts were teens. But is Facebook only dangerous just because its addictive; the fact that most teenagers are adding strangers as friends in their profile alone is a scary thought to think of. Around 82% of teens worldwide share their personal images and information with their friends on Facebook. An alarming study has been taken by Dr. Mubarak Rahamathulla from Flinders University, where he gathered 500 teens, ages from 13 to 17. Shockingly the study showed that 18% of teenagers have met face-to-face with strangers that they have met through Facebook. After those terrifying results Dr. Mubarak Rahamathulla warned a lot of teen about their unknown friends .But as much as Dr. Mubarak Rahamathulla tried to warn teens of the expected dangers that may occur from adding an unknown person in their Facebook account. A lot of their responses were I know how to protect myself or Its highly unlikely to happen to me. Dr. Mubarak Rahamathulla said: Most teens think that they are invincible when it comes to Social Network and that nothing terrible is going to happen to them and that, but what they dont know is that how much they are wrong and how close they are in becoming in danger (21). Another result from the previous research shows, about 23% of the 500 teens were asked to be friends with strangers. Whats even more terrifying is that 50% of the 500 teens list their

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personal details such as phone number, email address, their locations and more, all through Facebook. Those kinds of acts that are being made by our unaware teens, may lead to a catastrophic ending. Thats not even the worse of it. Records also show that nearly 30% of the teen participants parents have never checked their children Computer. With parents not making the suitable cautions which they should and responsible of making. Its making it a lot easier for stockers and strangers to take advantage of their unaware children. A similar study that has been taken by an It security firm called Sophos. They created a fake Facebook account called Freddie and used it to see how many out 200 members in Facebook would accept a stranger as a friend. 87members accepted Freddie as a friend. Even more shocking 82 members provided Freddie with personal information about themselves. But what does make people want to accept a stranger as a friend when they would avoid talking to one Face-to-Face? This following study tries to discover why might people want to accept a stranger as a friend. To begin this research they asked a group of students from the Southwestern University to participate in their research in exchange for extra credit. But as a condition they must have Facebook account. The total number of students was 235 and 43% of those users are male. Also in order to observe the records for this research as broad as possible they took the students from different backgrounds and nationality. 55% of the participants are Caucasians, 18% are African Americans, 14% are Hispanic, 10% Asian Americans and 3 % are other ethnicities. To make even more broad research the participants ages were from 18 to 52. Their strategy of this research was to send to their Facebook accounts a set of questions that are about random things, making them believe that this is the actual test. But the real test was to send a friend request from their fake accounts Nancy (female) and Tobi (male) with tempting profile pictures, as they answer the questions. The results were about 70% of the

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participants accepted the fake friend request were as the rest10% just ignored the request without accepting nor denying, and the rest have rejected the friend request. Mostly teens under 21 have accepted the anonymous friend request .Furthermore; most of the teens that have accepted the friend request from a stranger have had variable reasons and backgrounds when the researcher looked closer at their past and present reasons. A group of those teens accepted the friend request just to have more friends in their friends list. Others accepted the friend request because they suffer loneliness in their lives there were also teens who just accepted the strangers friend request just because of the picture. Clearly with those kind of reasons our teen need guides and awareness of Facebook and its surrounding dangers . Whereas on the other hand, most of the rejects for the friend request came from people ages 40 and above. With those disturbing records it is clear that our teen have lack of knowledge when it comes to strangers and sharing with them personal information. Whats even more disturbing is when Ron Bowles, an online security consultant shocked everyone when he posted personal information of 100 million users in Facebook with the whole world. His method was scanning everyone that has an account in face book and posts only their public information. Shockingly he gathered numerous peoples name, locations, age even zip code of their states. His only intention of this act was to show people how easy it is to find personal information by strangers without even hacking to peoples files.

But Facebook isnt only dangerous because its addictive or because of unknown friend request. It also has lots more dangers that surround it. For instance identity theft, stocking, losing a job offer and cyber bullying etc. Those kinds of problems have caused many troubles to a lot of

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people leading to breaking marriages and affecting peoples reputations, money even reached a point of murdering someone! But Facebook isnt all bad what I have just previously mentioned is only the darker side of Facebook. While on the other hand Facebook also has a lot of bright qualities. For instance job offerings and also inspection for employers to check their employee's personalities and more. Moreover, employers tend to look at their Social Network accounts to see the other side of potential employee's personality. A president in a consulting company In Chicago decided to check on a candidate's Facebook page and found descriptions of marijuana, shooting people and obsessive sex. Finally the candidate was rejected for this absurd behavior. Believe it or not, Nielsen Online says, users spent an average of 7 hours a month on Facebook. Also in the U.S 53% of people check their Facebook profile before getting out of bed in the morning and 35% check their accounts several times in a day. So the question still remains are Facebook or any other Social Network cites too dangerous that they should be banned from usage? Also how do we expect to beat Facebook addiction when its a huge time saver for staying in touch, and unbeatable for keeping up with speed with whats going on in the world?

Works Cited

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Smahel, David. Associations between online friendship and Internet addiction among adolescents and emerging adults. American Psychological Association. Developmental Psychology, Vol 48(2), Mar, 2012. pp. 381-388. Hardie, Elizabeth. Excessive Internet Use: The Role of Personality, Loneliness and Social Support Networks in Internet Addiction. Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies & Society; 2007, Vol. 5 Issue 1, p34-47, 14p, 3 Charts. Thomoson, Jodie. Good Health (ACP Publishing PTY Limited) . Nov2011, p8688, 2p. SOCIAL media - Psychological aspects. Kuss, Daria J ; Griffiths, Mark D. Excessive online social networking: Can adolescents become addicted to Facebook?. Education & Health (EDUC HEALTH (DEVON)), 2011; 29(4): 68-71. Hempel, Jessi : Kowitt, Beth. Fortune International. FACEBOOK Inc. 3/2/2009, Vol. 159 Issue 4, p34-41, 8p. Schulte, Bret. American Journalism Review. University of Maryland. Winter2009, Vol. 31 Issue 5, p22-25, 4p.