13 reasons why you should avoid Facebook in 2013

If the arrest of girls by the police in Mumbai on posting personal views on Facebook, the fact that your information is sold and also that recruiters look around at facebook to judge you were not enough reasons to moderate your activity, here are the top 13 reasons (since its 2013 and 13 is an unlucky number!) why I think facebook is a big evil and why many of them should realize its negativity before they drown in it.

13) I think the inception of this idea was when I used to meet my school friends and we would enthusiastically share the latest bytes of our lives. The plans and meetings were something we looked forward to until facebook happened. In the FB era when we met shared our stories, all of us already knew what was happening in each other’s lives and there was hardly anything to talk about or it just took the excitement away.

12) People add you so that they can be in touch with you (Blah!!!). I guess the last means of being connected with someone is at least wishing them on their birthday. Obviously you don’t have to wish every person you know. But when someone wishes you, be courteous enough to say thank you. Have we lost all the basic courtesy?

11) So a friend of mine picked up this fight with me that why didn’t I comment on her picture. I tried explaining, I am not that frequent with facebook and asked, was is it not important that I actually call her and even meet her whenever I am in town to catch up so that I can state my thoughts in more than 140 characters. But efforts of personal touch are not important since the are not on public platform.

10) So I was talking to this friend and he complains about another friend of his being too inquisitive and practically questioning him on everything on facebook. I told him; if you do not want somebody to ask you something about it, then why post it. It’s as simple as that! Remember that high school time when somebody would start a topic in front of you and would not broach it further. Well, duh if you don’t want people pestering you, don’t publicize it.

9) Did I mention the most obvious thing of the amount of time you waste on it which can be used to do something more constructive? Also bullying is such a huge menace because you are sitting behind the comfort of the screen and nobody will be able to punch you. The amount of negative things you could actually say there, I bet you would not dare to tell anyone on their face ever. Quite a lot of kids have gone into depression and some even beyond the veil all thanks to the virtual bullying and peer pressure including the gender bias which makes you feel completely insignificant and this is proven research!

8) Recently a friend of mine argued with me that he did not feel the need to talk or even message me because he already knew what was happening in my life through facebook and that is how I should keep a track of his life updates as well. I was flabbergasted for two main reasons. One, I am just putting up a sentence, not the story behind it and would want to share that with close friends. Like if I get a job, I will put that but I am not going to say about the interview and maybe all the anecdotes that went into getting it. Alternatively, if you are putting up the whole stories with your 1000+ “acquaintances” then what privilege do your close friends have. They are supposed to know you the best and know stuff about you which nobody else does right? But here, I walk around and meet people who tell me more about my closest friend then I know myself!!

7) You have an information overdose with so many people literally stuffing information in your face. Like one of my friends put it, she said “ Nemi, I log in, once in a few days and by which time I miss the link of the blog you post but I notice what other people are upto because they post every single day. That’s stuffed, in your face marketing”. It so happens, you are really exhausted to find out what your best friends are doing simply because you feel overdosed with information.

6) This one came straight from a professor. She said that she stopped logging on facebook because, when she would comment on one person’s status or write on their wall, another of her friend would get offended saying “You have time to talk to them but no time to talk to me”. And I may not be off the mark if I said that many of our friendships would have been broken because you grew close to people in the virtual world that you lost track of your real relations (Refer: Mal in Inception)

5) Do you remember the old joy, when you used to run down to your friend’s house or call them up immediately because you had amazing news to tell them and you wanted them to know it before anyone else did? Well what the hell happened to that?? Something really amazing happened to a friend of mine and I told him, well why you didn’t tell me about it. He is like, Dude I posted it on facebook for everyone to see it. You should have seen it there as well. I simply miss the joy of seeing/calling somebody up and celebrating that joy rather than just get notifications and think, “Oh yeah, people noticed my achievement”.

4) The third to make it to the list is very technical. Take out some time and go through their privacy laws and FB policies. You will be left aghast!! Pretty much everything you do, remains out there and gets used in the most negative way possible. Also, since the genesis of graph search, I feel more scared and vindicated. Imagine, if you can set the search parameters correctly, anyone can look you up just because you have liked few pages and written a few things about yourself and can be easily predicted by someone to manipulate you!

3) So this realization came to me when somebody took advantage of my name to get in good books with someone and spoilt my reputation. I found out, that the professor actually thought that this other person was one of my closest friend just by the mere amount of knowledge he rattled on about me. This was highly surprising since I never used to speak to this person and he found out everything about me from facebook and ultimately, I had to go through a long road to sort my position, all because, somebody knew a lot about me. It just requires a minuscule common sense to understand the kind of people you add/delete from FB to keep the wrong characters at bay.

2) So there is this close friend and we were just talking generally and he went on to tell me lots of things about everyone and who is up to what. I casually asked him, if he knew what I do, what I study, what do I work on, stuff I do outside of the classroom and he went completely blank. Knew where some random person went to party the previous day but didn’t know what his close friend was even studying. How about making an effort to find out stuff that matters rather than just gossip virtually about people that don’t even matter on who went where, with whom and did what.

1) And the award for quitting facebook goes to the feeling of insecurity and negativity that you get out of it. Facebook is a tool for those who wish to fan their egos and prove superiority over others by posting indulgence in a kind of exhibitionism that helps them achieve their end-goal: to raise their bar and overcome the existing (common!) sense of low self-esteem! People are in a race to show how amazing their life is and where you feel left out or simply annoyed that people won’t stop bragging!

In a place, where relations are not listed as per truth, where the photos say a different story from your words about your life, where narcissism and boosting your ego to leave an indelible mark in the quickly passing time overpowers the true nature of relations, it definitely marks a source of feeling unwanted because either your life doesn’t match up to someone or you don’t feel a part of theirs.

In this revolutionary age when facebook is supposed to bring us closer more than ever, don't you think its time we re evaluate if it is really doing that or pushing us further apart and get back to a real world?

I would love to hear your stories and experiences on this as well people since I may have missed out some things myself. Do post your thoughts with your names.
Cheers!

P.S:Facebook addiction is a clinical disorder!! Check it!