It is said that Facebook was a great tool created to help you reconnect with people from your past and connect with people from your present but from helping you have your circle of friends close to you, it evolved to social validation: which means it is very dangerous for vulnerable people. “Social media use is connected to anxiety, depression and social maladjustment; particularly among adolescents. The more time kids spend online, the unhappier they are” says Tucker Carlson from Fox News on his reportage (min 0:56) “Facebook is destroying America and its kids” the 10th of November 2017.
Facebook creators already knew it would affect this kind of people but launched it anyway because they knew people would use it and probably keep using it even more every time because they would seek for more comments and likes, even from strangers, in order to feel great about themselves. But the problem is not only Facebook but every social media such as Instagram or Twitter. People tend to show a perfect life, perfect body, perfect lifestyle, richness, and superficial things that are at the end unreal.
“Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker, admits in an interview that he and other Facebook founders knew they were creating something addictive and potential harmful to adolescents” it’s also said by Tucker in his reportage (min 1:42). Teenagers are starting to live their lives according to impossible standards imposed by “influencers” from the internet. And often tend to be clinically depressed for not reaching those “life goals”.
Nowadays, there are more children with phones in their hands; so the questions is: what is going to happen with them when they reach the age of 18 if they’re already seeking for attention on the internet. We are not talking about adults who supposedly know how to behave and know what to pay attention to, if something is important or not; we are talking about young generations of people who believe that if you have thousands of likes then you are successful in life.
Face-to-face interaction is also not that important anymore; kids and teenagers spend more hours looking at a screen of their smart technological devices, than playing around with friends or even family. I’ve seen families of six sitting at a table for dinner and all of them paying attention to what is going on anywhere else but in their own home. Parents give their children their cellphones in order to sit them down and “be calm” when they need to do something. The problem is that it has changed now, they do not do that only when they need a moment to -let’s say- work but every time they don’t want their children to “interrupt them”. So, if they are always with the phone in their hands, they have all access to any kind of information out there no matter how young, immature and thus vulnerable to negative content they are.
The thing is that Facebook, or any social media, are not bad tools; actually, I believe they are pretty important and useful when used adequately and with limits. They are great tools to be in contact with family and friends if you live abroad or you are geographically separated, or if you need to use twitter to report some social injustice that is happening around the world; although this is not the whole reality. Even though being a great tool, “it literally changes your relationship with society and each other” says Tucker quoting Sean Parker, former president of Facebook (min 3:19).