By Sikandar K. Sherwani
“FACEBOOK ADDICTION” or “Facebook addiction disorder” are not, however; medically approved terms, rather this relatively depicts addictive behaviours or attitude of using Facebook extraordinarily – connecting, sharing, and learning via Facebook, despite of the availability of other resources; sounds indeed something alarming. Among all social networking sites, Facebook is the most popular social networking website which has become the global phenomenon for the past few years.
It was created by Mark Zucherbeg, a student at Harvard University in 2004 as the network to access college students information. Later, the use of Facebook was spread to other universities and became a public domain in 2006. Now, Facebook is the fastest growing social platform with over 750 million users, generating more than 1.6 billion page views each day. As Facebook becomes more popular, so does Facebook addiction; users suffer from this addiction when they spend more time on Facebook than interacting with people in the real world. This is the first survey in Pakistan as male gender has been engaged much so that study was conducted only on 840 male student populations in the metropolitan city, Karachi – ranging 18-30 years of age. The survey was conducted and designed by Sikandar K. Sherwani, Faculty member, the Microbiology Federal Urdu University, Karachi.
The survey results indicate that 73 per cent of Facebook users consider very strongly as addiction. Nonetheless; 62 per cent respondents were also found considering Facebook using as time wastage, yet 29 per cent spend 6 hours daily on Facebook. In this survey 43 per cent accepted it as a source of spoiling young minds yet 66 per cent respondents admitted of having strong temptation towards Facebook. Moreover, that survey reveals that 60 per cent of Facebook users use it on daily basis, 85 per cent thought of it as good social networking website, 52 per cent also had a view that Facebook is a source of knowledge and learning.
An International survey reveals that people who are anxious and socially insecure use Facebook more than those with lower scores on those traits, probably because those who are anxious find it easier to communicate via social media than face-to-face.