Downsides of Facebook

I wanted to share my thoughts about Facebook after reading few articles about downsides of Facebook.

http://friendship.about.com/od/Conflicts_With_Friends/tp/Downsides-Of-Facebook-Friends.htm

http://www.today.com/money/facebook-may-boost-self-esteem-theres-downside-says-study-6C10168070

https://gigaom.com/2011/06/21/the-downside-of-facebook-as-a-public-space-censorship/

https://knoji.com/4-disadvantages-of-using-facebook/

Facebook has more downsides than upsides.

This judgment or view doesn't correspond with the majority opinion, which holds that Facebook has been and still is, a positive tool where people can communicate, post pictures, tell stories and enjoy all the conveniences of long-distance digital contact without the time-wasting disadvantages of other means of communication.
It is an all-in-one mechanism: Skype, Picassa AIM, MySpace and effectively every other social networking and personal information site put together. How can such a miraculous instrument be malicious?

Sociologically speaking, Facebook has come to replace actual personal communication in our lives. Statistics show that more people speak on Facebook now than in real life.This has negative consequences. Since people are no longer speaking as much on the phone, face-to-face, a very important part of being human has been cast aside by the very services that Facebook facilitates. No need to go and talk to so-and-so because Facebook can do it instead. No need to go through the trying process of face-to-face communication: Facebook can do the verbal communication well enough. Unfortunately, people forget that most communication as we have learned in class is tonal, physical and intonation-based, not purely verbal. By talking on Facebook, we are acting only a very small part of the great pageant of shared ideas. So small, indeed, that it can hardly be considered communication in the classical sense.

There is a measure of addictiveness in Facebook’s convenient and fun applications and no age-group is exempt from its magnetic clutch. As an example, Facebook allows us to put minimal effort to catch up with acquaintances.

Like everything, Facebook is good and bad. Its utility and value depend on how it is used. Inherently, it is a valuable tool; practically, it is arguably a dangerous and personally numbing instrument of coercion, merely another item on the extensive list of modern soul-deadening technologies. However, as I mentioned before, I personally think it has more downsides.

Facebook is often necessary. I took down my Facebook for a year and ultimately had to come back to the fold to communicate conveniently with classmates and lab partners. I am morally opposed to it, but I have an account for purely practical purposes.