There has been an explosion in the usage of this online social networking tool across Europe: unfortunately many people have crossed the line from social networking to social dysfunction. This is a real health issue and I am calling upon the Commission to take action.All the usual authoritarian heart-tuggers are in there. The hyperbolic use of 'explosion'; the expression as fact that this is a 'real health problem'; invocation of 'experts'; the comparison with a commonly regarded evil, in this case gambling; and do I sense an underlying hatred of a big, bad (but popular) capitalist money-making enterprise? Yep, I think so.
Visiting your Facebook page frequently actually causes what psychologists refer to as ‘intermittent reinforcement’. Notifications, messages and invitations reward you with an unpredictable high, much like gambling. That anticipation can get dangerously addictive. Many people access their Facebook page once or twice a week; however, for others it has turned into a compulsion — and it is a compulsion to dissociate yourself from your real world and go and live in the Facebook world.
As socialist (which the author of this crap is, natch) navel-gazing becomes ever more absurd, one must ask why they always get so jealous of those who enjoy something popular? Or, more to the point, why does this jealousy always - but always - drive them to seek a solution whereby others are stopped from deriving that enjoyment?
And why collective punishment is, yet again, the chosen tool to restrict choice for the vast majority, on the flimsy premise that a tiny few may be incapable of exercising control over their own lives.
Didn't that used to be part and parcel of evolution?
