As a user of social networks I have been observing how we spend our time using one of the most powerful tool on the internet and my focus in this article is to describe some of the problems that could mess the way we live our lives online. The problems I will be citing are: social networking addiction; leakage of personal information; impatient behaviour and some others. Although I am stating problems in this article, I am aware of social networking benefits, but this is a topic that probably I will be commenting in another article.

To start this wide range of problems that involves a wide range of internet users, I will be talking about social networking addiction. To be truthful, all of the problems in a social network are connected, thus each issue brings another issue and so on. Social networking addiction could be the head of a body of problems because this is in fact the most common problem between users all over the world and this problem leads to all the other problems.

When can I see if I am already addicted to social media? If you caught yourself texting or checking out in your mobile while you were in a restaurant or when something happens you talk things like “#fail” or “#upset =(” you are a freaking social networking addicted. And then you might be asking yourself: “What’s the problem with that?” Not a problem if it is something irrelevant, but a problem if it is something bigger. It comes to be a problem if you stop talking with your close friends while hanging. It is totally unfair if your REAL friends ask you out and then you accept going out with them, but indeed you are going out with your facebook or whatsapp friends, if you know what I mean! You might be losing all your friends and you still don’t know it.

With a networking addiction and a most of the time spent on the internet, then It comes the leakage of personal information. People are more used to share personal information on the internet because they pass their entire life typing instead of going to a friend’s home to have an old fashioned conversation. Sharing personal information became a common thing, however also a big problem. In the past we had the traditional BULLYNG that every single fat kid would suffer, but now it became cybernetic. According to the website: dosomething.org, “nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online. One in four had it happen more than once”, “70% of students report seeing frequent bullying online”. Most of the cases of cyberbullying, kids commit suicide. Teenagers always want to have more and more virtual friends, they think that having 5000 friends on facebook would make them happier, although this is not the case. At first, we cannot have the same number of friends in real life, our brain is capable of only 150 friends according to a research made by Oxford University. Some people have even their enemies as friends on social networks. Where is the sense in this? That is why the rate of cyberbullying has increased between social media users.

Impatient behaviour nowadays on internet is making people more comfortable and at the same time making people dumber. The currently Information goes and comes faster and faster day by day and all that we need is right in our hands, we don’t have to do such a strong movement to get what we want. A great example that could fill this gap is the laziness of users when they see some event and they just believe what they have read, they don’t find for more references, they don’t question it. Last year in Brazil there were protests all around the country complaining about the country current situation. There was a conflict between the television and mastered medias and the internet users. Some people tried to believe in just what came in their Facebook timeline.

Maybe this is not a big problem to be involved in this article, but in certain way it has to be included…”internet charity”. Another common thing on the social medias are the people’s awareness of sad events. People are contenting themselves just by being aware of bad things happening in this world. Sharing images of people dying from starvation, or dying from cancer, makes facebook users satisfied. As David Wong says: “Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing.” We really got to do something instead of caring. Some people post false images saying that every single sharing would give one dollar for the treatment of a cancer victim. Some worthless person created it! The worst BULLSHIT ever seen! Sometimes it makes me angry, sorry. So ... If you got interested on David’s job you can check one of his most famous publications on Cracked:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person_p2/#ixzz2swM7TbKk

As you can see we can get a lot of trouble in social network. It has transforming us into people without essence of life and its real meaning. Social network can be important to us. However, it can also be devastating so take care on what you do on your life and get up and do something, try to change your habits not to lose your friends while texting at a bar. DO NOT MAKE YOUR LIFE OF “WHILEs” and separate virtual from real. That would make things much easier.

LIVE ONLINE PROPERLY