Facebook, which began as a way to connect students at Harvard, now has a population greater than most countries. The site has become a staple in the lives of many of its 600 million members. It is where people store and share photos, plan and organize events, communicate with the people in their lives. It's become a hub for news and link/video sharing. It's a marketing tool, a place to promote one's business and professional endeavors.
It is also ruining our lives.
Oh, sure, sometimes it seems innocent enough. Sign onto Facebook, visit a Friend's Farm. Poke a few Pals. "Like" everybody's everything. Share the vapid details of your morning commute. What's the harm?
Look, we can't all view the world through rose-colored laptop screens. So we here at Internet Evolution have taken the lead and determined the 10 Ways Facebook Is Destroying Our Lives.
If you think that's a scary premise, consider this: We only stopped at 10 because we got tired and hungry – and because we needed to get back to catching up on all of the Facebook Newsfeed updates we missed while we were writing.
From the fact that Facebook is a flowing faucet of data to everyone from advertisers to the FBI, to the many worrying ways Facebook is blurring the lines between professional and personal – and possibly ensuring that having a career in the future is going to be harder than it's ever been before – there is a lot to be fearful of, where everyone's favorite social network is concerned.
There's little indication that Facebook is disappearing anytime soon, so in the meantime the best we can do is make ourselves aware of the many ways life (as we know it) is changing for the worse with every status update, picture, and link we post. So click through the following 10 pages, and afterwards, if you aren't too busy rocking back and forth in a puddle of your own sweat and tears, be sure to tell us on the boards below what you think and what we missed.
And feel free to share this link on Facebook... if you dare.
It's a handy way to observe the evolution -or not- of the human thinking; in particular in those pictures where you can see all the comments from people who you don't know.
Amusing story: While I was working for the company that bought MySpace.com last year, the marketing department sent out a note to all employees suggesting they should create a MySpace account if they didn't already have one. I sent them back a short note asking where the corporate account was, as there really wasn't a presence on the site. They sent me back a note explaining (in short words, very slowly, so I could comprehend it) that Facebook was for corporate stuff, and MySpace was supposed to be for personal things. "Your Mom is on Facebook. Your Grandma is on Facebook. Heck, your PREACHER is on Facebook. On MySpace, you can be yourself and have fun!" Well, that's their view at least. Facebook has become a technological tar pit, sucking people into its maw, and perhaps even down to their doom. Is it destroying our lives? Perhaps not, but it certainly is throwing a monkey wrench into social situations world-wide. Maybe we should re-think this whole "Internet" thing....
"The results showed that the more time girls spend on Facebook, the more they suffered conditions of bulimia, anorexia, physical dissatisfaction, negative physical self-image, negative approach to eating and more of an urge to be on a weight-loss diet. Extensive online exposure to fashion and music content showed similar tendencies, but manifested in fewer types of eating disorders. As such, the more the exposure to fashion content on the Internet, the higher a girl's chances of developing anorexia. A similar direct link was found between viewing gossip- and leisure-related television programs (the likes of "Gossip Girl") and eating disorders in adolescent girls. The study also revealed that the level of personal empowerment in these girls is negatively linked to eating disorders, such that the higher the level of empowerment, the more positive the physical self-image and the lower the chances of developing an eating disorder."
True, nimantha. We can't play the victim too strenuously when it comes to FB, though we can acknowledge that many have innocentlyposted stuff without really understanding their level of exposure -- and lived to regret it.
True FB is ruining our lives but we mustnt forget that it is we who have the control of using FB or not when we want. So as long as we have the control we cannot blame anyone else for ruining our lives isnt it ??
These are great tips, Joe. I'm wondering how I could streamline your approach for myself. Worth some thought. Perhaps setting up a calendar, or pegging the annual December holiday season as a focal point.
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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