Facebook gone too far

By Jesse Gaunce
February 16, 2011

Facebook is working on site improvements all the time. An upcoming feature hopes to streamline your major modes of communication; facebook notifications, email and chats, in once place.

I think people use Facebook too much.

Be honest with yourself, you’re probably on it when you’re doing homework or writing a paper. You’re probably on it when you have friends over. You’re probably even on it on your cell phone or iPod when you’re out somewhere.

I’m guilty of all of that just as much as the next person, but I’m not nearly as obsessed as some people are.

According to Facebook’s statistics page, there are currently 500 million active users and 50 percent of them log in daily. People also spend over 700 billion minutes per month of Facebook.

Of the 500 million active users, 200 million of them use Facebook mobile and are twice as active on Facebook than people who don’t use Facebook mobile.

See what I mean?

On his blog, michaelthemaven.com, Michael Maven posted a poll and asked how many times a day people check their Facebook. 23.48 percent (58 votes) say they check their accounts anywhere between two to five times a day. 22.67 percent (56 votes) say they check theirs about six to 10 times a day.

That sounds pretty accurate as far as how many times I, myself and my friends go on our accounts. The thing that astounds me the most is that according to his poll, 8.5 percent of the people that voted (21 votes) check their accounts more than 40 times a day.

These aren’t official results conducted by researchers or anything, but those numbers are still pretty interesting to say the least.

One thing that really bothers me and can support why I believe people use Facebook too much, is the fact that I have heard people blame the website for missing class, not sleeping and gaining weight. Don’t blame the website, blame yourself for being lazy. Facebook didn’t tell you to fail that test or gain 15 pounds.

Even when they aren’t using their computers, I’ve seen people leave Facebook up just so they don’t have to log back in later. I can’t figure out if that’s just how unbelievably lazy people are, or if they’re just obsessed.

Twitter is also very popular, as it can be downloaded to cell phones, iPod’s and so on. According to a survey by Gigya.com, 44 percent of people use Facebook for social sharing, whereas only 29 percent use Twitter. So we can obviously see what is more popular.

Out of that 44 percent that use Facebook for social sharing, I bet a good percentage of them share their daily life story.

It amazes me that people post their daily schedules on Facebook and actually think the majority of their friends care. Why would I need or want people that I don’t even talk to anymore to know where I am and what I’m doing at all times?

It also amazes me that people update their statuses as a way to get attention. Obviously, the purpose of posting a status is to start a conversation, but I feel like a lot of times some people’s statuses are geared more towards wanting to start an online therapy session rather than just a casual conversation.

Posting a status like that every once in a while is fine because everyone has bad days, but when people repetitively say things like “I hate my life” or “Omg I feel like I’m going to die,” it drives me nuts. If you really want to hate your life so much, go live with people in Haiti and then tell everyone how much your life sucks.

Facebook is meant to be a harmless way of interacting with your friends when you aren’t physically with them. So why and how did it become a social diary?

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Jesse Gaunce

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