The Newfound Addiction - Facebook

chillibreeze writer — Priya Rana

If giving away spring eggs, answering personal questions from friends, commenting on photos, and updating your status message is what you look forward to when you wake up every morning, ask yourself: “Am I addicted to Facebook?” While more and more people like you become members of social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, and Twitter, psychologists grapple with the declaration of this excessive usage as an addiction and psychological disorder.

With the recent news of a son suing his mother for hacking into his Facebook account, we might just have to take a cue about where our generation is headed given the excessive usage of social networking sites.

Though there are no statistics available, therapists accept that there has been an unprecedented rise in the number of people who come to them to discuss problems that start from social networking and lead to social dysfunction. Find out what level of an addict you are or if you really are an addict by asking yourself these questions and making an honest assessment:

Do I think of a networking site or what I have to do on it before going to bed?
Do I feel the urge to change my status message as soon as I wake up or several times a day?
Do I let go some important tasks like spending time with family, dishwashing, reading, and work assignments in lieu of spending time on networking sites?
Do I tell my friends in person to send virtual eggs and help earn cash on Farmville or other such games?
Does my partner/colleague/ boss complain once in a while that I have started spending way too much time on the computer?
Do I usually have my meals in front of the computer?

If you answered ‘yes’ to most of these questions, you may have a tendency toward getting addicted to social networking sites. Don’t panic, because the situation might not be too bad. Nnamdi Godson Osuagwn, after a lot of research came up with his book called Facebook Addiction where he enumerates stories of some really addicted Facebook fans. He said that this was his way of dealing with his addiction and staying away from it.

What you can do
The first step to conquer your addiction is to acknowledge and accept it. Once you accept that you are neglecting yourself or life/people around you, everything else becomes easier. The next step would be to deal with the gravity of the problem. You could just be beginning to turn into an addict or you might be one who finds it difficult to look back. In either case, there is help at hand:

a) Beginner’s tryst: Quick realisation is always the first remedial step. If it is only the number of hours that you spend on the social networking sites that disturb you, you might just be in the initial stages of getting addicted. It is a no panic situation; simply restrict your number of minutes you spend on social networking sites. Do whatever you have to at one go and then log back in only after 24 hours. This will give you the time to do something more creative and worthwhile.
b) Sneaker’s trials: So you simply can’t stop yourself from looking into people’s pictures, randomly clicking on friend’s acquaintances’ profile and getting updates about everyone on your friend’s list? You may qualify as a sneaker. All you need to do is check your behaviour. Why do you need to have so many people on your friend list? Is it important to have an idea about who is doing what in their life? Once you ask yourself these questions you’d be at ease knowing that a majority of these people don’t make an impact on your daily life and you could do without knowing about every detail of their lives.
c) Breath taker’s plight: You knew social networking was your thing and then it became a habit. You tried to get over it and quit a particular site. However, in your effort to quit one if you joined another or joined back after a while. If so, you definitely have some serious evaluation to do. Ask yourself why you quit in the first place and how life was different as a result. Then, devote time to things like hobbies, activities, and exercising. They’ll take your mind off social networking and make you feel more content.
d) Addict’s obsession: You’ve come back from work and you head straight for the computer to protect your Farmville crops from withering? Your lunch can wait and so can your husband, but you can’t wait to change your status message to ‘busy’? Don’t fool yourself and accept you are addicted! The next step would be to let your friends and family know you developed an addiction. This way they might help you to stay away by not messaging you too much. Understand that household chores, exercising, and listening to music might seem boring but they help you relax and connect more compared to checking your friend’s newly uploaded pictures. Slowly, quit logging in as frequently as you did. Over time, you’ll be able to stay off social networking entirely.

It might be difficult to quit cold turkey, but then any obsessive habit is difficult to deal with. Access what is it that you are missing out on, because of this habit and you would find yourself in a safer spot by the mere thought! Finally, if none of the ways works for you, join a ‘Facebook addiction anonymous groups’ but remember it might end up making you an internet addict in lieu of leaving social networking. So tread carefully!

Editor's note: Most articles submitted to Chillibreeze go through a selection process. Only 30 percent of submitted articles are accepted for publication on the Chillibreeze.com featured article list. All accepted articles are edited and proofread for glaring errors of punctuation and grammar. Sentence structure is changed in certain cases and sometimes, entire sections are rewritten. If you notice any errors that have slipped through the cracks, do let us know! (Email us at info at chillibreeze dot com).

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in May, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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