Facebook addiction breeding multiple problems for teens

By Technology Times at August 13, 2011 | 3:43 pm | PrintA- Reset A+

SPECIAL REPORT IBD: The rising trend among teens of getting addicted to the social websites like Facebook has created a lot of social and mental disorders like mania, paranoia, aggressive tendencies, and antisocial behaviour. These teens also more often display narcissistic tendencies, which are fed by their ability to constantly broadcast information about themselves through Facebook.

“The excessive use of Facebook and text messaging can lead teens into drug abuse, drinking, sex and psychological health problems,” reveals a survey conducted by the American Public Health Association.

A professor of psychology at California State University, Larry Rosen, conducted a research about the overdosing of Facebook and conducted a survey on teens and observed 3000 teens for 15 minutes in the act of studying.

The findings of the survey show that over 19.8 per cent of respondents said that they send over 120 text messages each day, whereas 11.5 per cent of respondents said that they spend over three hours every day on social networking sites.

About 22.5 per cent of respondents said they don’t send text messages at all, while 22 per cent don’t use a social network. Those teens were far more healthy, probably because they were more involved in outdoor sports and spent less time on their computers.

Out of estimated 20 million overall internet populations, over 5 million Internet users from Pakistan are members of Facebook as well. Social networking giant added 2 million users from the country in last 8 months to cross 5 million mark recently. About 3.4 million users from Pakistan on Facebook are males, while rest of 1.6 population is female. 76 percent of these users from Pakistan are aged between 18-34.

Overall Facebook remains the dominating social network in the country. Twitter is said to have around 2 million users from Pakistan, while Google Plus, still being in beta, is nearing 10,000 users from Pakistan.

“Facebook is an addiction. Teens instead of spending their time in studies and other physical activities are just wasting their valuable time in facebooking,” Farhan Malik, a telecom service sector professional, explained.

According to Syed Faseeh Abbas, a teen ager, the Facebook can cause many problems for teens as they use most of their time on chating with friends and doing other stuff. “Facebook is not quite safe because all of the information and personal stuff of the user is accessed to the site and the information of yours is no more personal,” he maintained.

“Facebook, a great network developed some years back for professionals to join each other and seek for each other’s problems, see opportunities and look for good time, has become a lucrative platform for teenagers to spend their precious time. The students of class 8 and even below love to make friendships at this site.” Hasnain Gardezi – a training specialist, explained.

According to him, the real life been effected by this bad usage as most of the time these kids are seem to be stuck with mother or father’s laptops for their entertainment, update their profiles, comment others and watch videos and pictures uploaded by friends and uploading their own. This lovely invention has become a curse for the upcoming generation who has to be future leadership. “Let’s save our youth and the future leadership by re-aligning their path for betterment of country and batter future of both of us,” he said.

Psychiatrists suggest that teens should keep balance in their daily activities with mainly focusing on their positive assignments as it would help them adopt positive trends in their social as well as mental behaviours.

 

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