Dear teenage Facebookers,
If there were 100 people fighting on a battlefield and 73 were occupied doing something unnecessary that killed time and energy, how likely would they win? Nearly impossible. Now, let’s take this into a realistic situation. The battlefield is life. The unnecessary task that the teens are involved in is Facebook. And who are those 73 people making it worse for the whole group? The 73% of teens that are on a social network website.
Every fire starts with a small flame. Every flame starts with a small spark. Every spark starts with a small problem. This small problem is Facebook. Now you may ask, how is Facebook slowly killing lives and overtaking in the battlefield? Search no longer, the answer lies in the very simplest place: any average teenager.
Life is short. Life is a battle. Life is a shirt; there for anyone to wear down with as many memories as they can. But in every average teenager’s life, there is a monster; a wall that barricades them from going to the other side. And that monster’s name is Facebook.
This monster doesn’t let teenagers live their life to the fullest because it makes it’s people under it’s reign, teenagers, to stay with it all day long. It snatches teenager’s attention from doing their homework to constantly check on it. It makes teenagers sad because it’s a way for them to rank themselves on the popularity chain, liking the things certain people do over others. It chases people to kill time, something so precious, something they’ll never get back, something they should use wisely. And even after all the problems the book gives the teenagers to face, teenagers still love it. And as a result of that? Teenagers spend way too much time on Facebook.
Facebook has the world down on it’s feet. With 1.19 billion active Facebook users worldwide, the website is popular and well known to many teenagers. In fact, the highest age group of Facebook users are teenagers. A recent poll shows that when teenagers aren’t in school, most of their time is killed on Facebook. The numbers of students on Facebook at school increase and are still growing as they learn how to jailbreak and as they start to access Facebook through their mobile. Mobile users total 189 million. That’s not a lot behind the total number of people on the website itself, are teenagers the cause to blame?
Remember the good old days when all that 8 year olds had was a coloring book and an imagination? Well, now they can iPods, cellphones, and most of them even have an account with a social networking website. Teenagers used to do their homework handwritten and then spend their time outside playing sports, doing errands, or hanging out with friends. Everything has stayed the same- except the location. Instead of going outside, teenagers go on Facebook. It makes sense when we hear that 30% of children and teens are obese. Because they’re battling it while having a conversation with their friend or playing sports… in a screen.
Drama and a wildfire barely have anything that differ between them. They both start small, eventually building their way up. It’s hardly ever recognizable when it first hits but when it is obvious, it knocks down person after person. Many things can be blamed for a wildfire, but it is safe to say that Facebook can be blamed for one of the many reasons for the start of drama. Facebook is a place that allows conversations of gossip to be private, friends and sometimes strangers to be updated on daily news, changes from relationship statuses and updates to be viewed almost instantly, and countless other things. If Facebook was limited within teens, these drama problems would be likely to not occur as often and the impact wouldn’t be so heavy.
A small post or comment can lead to cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can lead to depression. Depression can lead to suicide. Can Facebook take the blame? Possibly.
As much as I encourage teens to not over use Facebook, there are the counter arguments. 48% of young Americans said they find out news through Facebook. And that makes perfect sense. Facebook allows teens to have relative conversations about important events or things, such as school. When there is a snow day, where do teens first go to get their information? Facebook. But, that’s not the only way to get information. If something is really important to spark a conversation online and is urgent to find out about, the internet offers many other options beside Facebook. For instance, texting would be one of those options. Texting is a way that provides people to get information from one person to another. Facebook does the same job but there’s much more you can do on Facebook so it’s more likely to get drifted off and kill time doing things that weren’t intended to do in the beginning. Why else may Facebook be good to use? It makes people social. Errrrr, wrong. It makes people learn that what people say online isn’t necessarily them when you meet them in person. In fact, 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life. Why would you waste time talking to someone who isn’t even like the way they act in person?
94% of teenagers use Facebook. Those 94 people out of the 100 that are ruining this shirt for everyone. This shirt’s name is life. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not to be wasted staring a screen all day long. Life’s point is to wear it out, live it to the fullest. Everyday, you are offered the shirt. You can neatly pack it away, saving it for another day or another moment, or wear it until it’s beaten down. Your choice. Use it wisely.
With best regards,
a former teenage Facebooker