Ask this question a number of Facebook users and most of them will agree that something like this does exist. However, most people that admit that an addiction can exist will play it down. Facebook addiction is nothing serious they will argue. After all, how can something that so many people engage in possibly be harmful or negative?
However, I am here to tell you that not only does "Facebook addiction" really exist, but also that it can be a serious problem having a negative impact on your life. In fact, this phenomenon is becoming so common that American psychologists have now come up with a descriptive term called "Facebook Addiction Disorder" or short FAD.
The sheer unlimited growth of the world's biggest social network recently has brought so many people to the site, that most of us feel that we have to join the site and stay there in order to be up-to-date on what is going on in our friendship circle or otherwise we will miss out on critical information. A kind of peer pressure has taken over that anyone who wants to be "in" has to join the site. And then of course, check there as often as possible to stay ahead with the news.
Our research and work has shown that Facebook addiction can be a serious mental problem that impacts the person affected by it in many negative ways. The most common effects are a big loss in productivity, the inability to concentrate and superficiality of friendships as well as isolation in extreme cases because of the ongoing preference of "online friendship" versus real life friendships.
It is not uncommon for Facebook addicts to log on to the site the first thing in the morning as well as update their personal status or check the site more than 5-6 times a day. Some of our readers have reported spending about 4-5 hours a day on the site. With such statistics it is no longer necessary to discuss the question if such an addiction really exists.
The question rather becomes on how to help such users to deal with their addiction, what can be done to reduce the time they spend there and if it wasn't actually best to quit the site entirely. Not only has the world seen the rise of a new potential online addiction termed "Facebook Addiction Disorder", but we will also have to deal with a rising number of affected people in the future as the scope of the world's biggest social network is only going to increase.
Awareness of such a disorder is the first step we need to bring into our society. More public discussion about the downsides of Facebook (and similar online networks) can only be beneficial to the ones currently being hooked on the network. But the best news is that since there was a life before Facebook, there also is a way to quit the addiction.
Chrisi Brand is the author of the book "How To Quit Facebook - And Do More Meaningful Things Instead". After suffering from a strong Facebook addiction himself for more than 5 months, a lot of trial and error he finally found a way that any person can quit Facebook within a number of days - without going back. You can learn more about this method here: http://www.howtoquitfacebooknow.com.
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