Facebook: Friend or Foe?

On September 7, 2012, Amanda Todd published a 9-minute YouTube video entitled "My Story: Struggling, Bullying, Suicide and Self Damage," which revealed her using flash cards to expose her experiences of being bullied. During the video, Amanda writes that when she remained in seventh grade, she as soon as used video chat to meet brand-new people over the Internet and soon began getting compliments on her looks. A stranger persuaded Amanda to flash her breasts on cam. The complete stranger later on blackmailed her with threats to expose the topless image to her good friends unless she provided a "program".

She refused. She would never ever make that error once again. Amanda Todd composed that during the next Christmas break, cops notified her at four am that the image was flowing the Web. Amanda composed that she experienced stress and anxiety, anxiety, and panic disorder since of this. Her household transferred to a brand-new house, where she later mentioned that she started using drugs and alcohol.

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A year later, the stranger had actually reappeared, producing a Facebook profile which used the partially nude photo as the profile image, and calling classmates at her new school. When once again she was being bullied, eventually triggering her to change schools for the second time. With more bullying and an actual attack, she tried suicide by consuming bleach, but was hurried to medical facility to have her stomach pumped. After returning home, Amanda found violent messages about her failed suicide attempt published to Facebook.

As soon as again, her family moved to another city to begin fresh, but Todd was not able to get away Facebook and her very first unfortunate mistake.

6 months later on even more messages and abuse were still being published to social networking websites. She began to become worse, and started cutting herself. In spite of taking anti-depressants and getting counseling, she overdosed and invested 2 days in the medical facility. She was teased by other students at her school for her low grades, and the time she invested in the healthcare facility to treat her extreme anxiety. On October 10, 2012 at about 6 PM, Amanda Todd hung herself in the house. So is Facebook a friend or an enemy?

Teens often don’t realize that bullying over the computer is the same as bullying in person. The harmless “joke” can be taken much, much worse because of the huge audience and the unclear tone of Facebook posts. Although Facebook can be a good source for meeting friends, spreading information, and changing peoples opinions, it can also be very harmful. Facebook can encourage cyber-bullying, make people become anti-social, and distract people from finishing other tasks.

On the positive side, Facebook is another way for people to connect with new friends, old friends, and family. According to the pro and cons website on social networking, seventy percent of adult social networking users visit the site to connect with friends and family. Fifty-two percent of teens say that using social media has helped improve their relationships with friends and eighty-eight percent believe that social media have helped them stay connected with friends they can not see regularly. Despite the fact that Facebook and social media sites have many positive sides, it has its bad sides as well.

Facebook users are starting to get more and more addicted each day. According to an article from WebMD, in a 2009 survey of 1,030 parents, Rosen and colleagues found out that children and teens had spent more time engaged in media (online and offline) had more anxiety, more stomachaches, and more sick days from school. In teens, the time spent playing video games also led to poorer health. In another ongoing survey of teens and adults, Rosen found that spending more time than average on Facebook was associated with signs of narcissism, anxiety, and bipolar disorder on a standard psychological test. In another 2011 study, 279 middle school, high school, and university students lost focus for an average of three minutes for every fifteen minutes spent studying or doing another task. Checking Facebook just once during the fifteen minute period was associated with lower grades. Not only does Facebook cause lower grades, it also can ruin someones self-esteem.

Facebook users feel as if they need to know if something important is happening, and by doing their work, they feel like they might miss out on something big. The New York Times released an article in April of 2011 that talked about FOMO, which stands for “the fear of missing out.” This mostly occurs when seeing Facebook statuses and photos posted by friends, questioning the event, wondering “Why wasn’t I there?” or “How come I didn’t know this was happening?” Sometimes it’s not just a specific event that throws us off, but just scrolling through a friends profile and noticing how much “better” his or her life appears. Facebook adds negative social comparisons and FOMO, which puts a sense of regret and a heavy weight on self-esteem.

As social networking sites become more and more popular, its users have expanded from teens to young adults, to even people over fifty. As you can see with Amanda Todd’s story, many people use social networking sites for the wrong reasons. People can be whoever they want to be, but some do use it for the right reasons, as for example connecting with family they haven’t seen in a while, or catching up with long-distance friends. Is Facebook a place where people can connect and have conversations about things that truly matter to them? Is it a place where you can express yourself without fear of judgement? Or is it a place for status updates that aren’t true, photoshopped profile pictures, and cyber-bullying disguised as humor? So what do you think? Is Facebook a friend or a foe?