HELP!! I think I am down with FAD... Facebook Addiction Disorder!!! :-S
To be diagnosed as having Facebook Addiction Disorder, a person must meet certain criteria. At least 2 or 3 of the following 6 criteria must be present at any time during a 6-8 months period:
1. The first thing is tolerance. This refers to the need for increasing amounts of time on Facebook to achieve satisfaction and/or significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time. They often have multiple Facebook windows opened at any one time. 3 is usually a sign and over 5 you're helpless.
2. After reduction of Facebook use or cessation, it causes distress or impairs social, personal or occupational functioning such as wondering why your Vista is so fast and improved etc. These include anxiety; obsessive thinking about what is written on your wall on Facebook etc.
3. Important social or recreational activities are greatly reduced and or migrated to Facebook. Instead of sending an email you post a message on your friend’s page about canceling a lunch appointment. You now stop answering your phone call from your Mom and insist she should contact you through Facebook chat.
4. This is getting serious if you start kissing your girlfriend's home page or a VRML virtual walk through a park is your idea of a date.
5. Your bookmark takes 20 minutes just to scroll from top to bottom or 8 of 10 people in your friend's list you have no idea of who they are.
6. When you meet people you start introducing yourself by following "see you in Facebook" or your dog has its own Facebook profile. You invite anyone you've met and any notifications, messages and invites reward you with an unpredictable high, much like gambling. As we spend more and more time online no questions it can be addictive. Some say that there is no such thing as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD).
I am not sure we have any answer for that yet. I am sure the pharma companies will be quick to say that there is medication solution out there with psychoactive drugs. So how many kinds of disorders are out there? Are they really disorders of just the pharma companies want us to believe there are?
Call it Facebook addiction or fetish, I see this as progress of enlightenment for the modern life. Our modern culture is unconsciously penetrated by the information (useful and useless) and we are all struggling with it. Social networks collapse the difference between culture and practical life and our culture is codified and distributed through the Internet. As a result the ‘culture’ industry is now being expanded beyond fashion, music and magazines. Much of this information that we’re exposed to on the Internet does not at all ‘signify’ true information or freedom from deception but it has reduced significantly the impact of any mass deception. The people's need to connect, along with the growth of social connectivity, would raise the quality of the social whole to a new and higher level.The organic composition of our social networks is growing. That determines networks as means of finding self-identities and not only as resources. Addiction may not be such a bad thing after all.
Go to the following links for more info...
http://thefacebookaddiction.com/
http://www.futurelab.net/blogs/marketing-strategy-innovation/2008/05/are_you_suffering_from_faceboo.html
P.S. speaking about social networking sites, I wonder what will happen to Friendster and MySpace in terms of restoring their past glory...
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