Facebook - with a subscriber base of approximately 500 million users, is the top social networking site in the world. It is believed that half of its users (which amounts to around 250 million people) log on to their Facebook account every single day without failing.
Facebook Addiction Statistics
The available statistics on Facebook addiction reveal that an average user spends around one hour on Facebook every day. Even though spending roughly an hour or so on Facebook doesn't really amount to addiction, the way this practice affects their actual life does amount to it. A recent study conducted by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research revealed that one-third of women in the age group of 18-34 check Facebook in the morning, even before they brush their teeth. Around 21 percent of the 1,605 surveyed for this study admitted that they wake up in the middle of the night to check Facebook. The fact that a large chunk of Facebook users belong to the 35+ age groups is no less surprising. Such is the craze of this social networking website that people nowadays seem to prefer instant messaging over face-to-face conversation. More than 100 million users access Facebook through their cell phones. These Facebook users are twice more active as compared to those who use their personal computers for the same. If the time spent on Facebook by the entire world is taken it consideration, it adds up to a whopping 6 billion minutes a day.
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Facebook Addiction Symptoms
- You wake up in the morning, and first thing you do is log onto your Facebook account.
- You spend more than an hour on Facebook - at a stretch or in short episodes over regular intervals.
- You and your siblings converse through Facebook wall and messages, even though you stay in same house.
- You can't seem to stop thinking about Facebook updates and comments when you are offline.
- You check Facebook for updates and comments after every hour at your workstation or on your cell phone.
- You look forward to get home in the evening so that you can see what is happening in cyberspace (on Facebook to be precise.)
- Your Facebook wall is full of status updates, comments, and applications that you just used.
- You can't go for a day without using Facebook, and even this thought makes you go into sort of depression.
- You give priority to Facebook over your commitments in professional and personal life.
- And lastly, your day ends with you checking Facebook for that one last time and bidding people 'good nite' through your Facebook status update. (You may even get an urge to wake up at middle of the night to see whether anyone has commented on your 'gud nite' status.)
how to get rid of your Facebook addiction?
step-1
Admit you might have an addiction to Facebook. and keep track of what you actually do on Facebook. After every Facebook session, ask yourself: "What did I just accomplish by checking Facebook?" Odds are, you're probably just logging in to see if you've been poked, or for updates of when your friends change their profile image, write a new note, add a new song to their favorite music, and do other little things that you can really live without knowing. But those might be the little things that keep you on a very short leash. At first you're confirming a new friend, and next thing you know, you've spent an hour looking at all the new people you're connected to. Recording your Facebook activities can help you realize how much time you actually spend getting nothing constructive done.
step-2
Define your goals on Facebook. Make a list of what you really want from it. Why did you originally sign up? So you could remember friends' birthdays? Find and keep old friends? Meet people with similar interests? Whatever your goals may be on Facebook, you need to make sure that you devote your time there to accomplishing those goals, instead of going off track with activities that get you nowhere. If you have no goals (i.e. if you signed up just because you had nothing better to do), skip the next step.
step-3
Make and follow a Facebook schedule. After each Facebook goal, write down how much time and at what frequency you'll need to be on Facebook to achieve that goal. Then write down the total number of hours, per week, that you should be spending on Facebook. If it seems like too much time, adjust your activity times accordingly. Following this schedule might bring your Facebook addiction under control without requiring you to quit altogether. Some examples:
- Stay in touch with college friends - Check every other day, spend no more than 15 minutes responding to messages only from college friends. (1 hour per week)
- Maintain my group - Check every morning and evening for 10 minutes each, only to remove any spam or junk. Note to self: do not respond to posts, comments or messages during this time. (2 hours, 20 minutes per week)
- Keep my group interesting - Spend 30 minutes every other day reading all of the comments and responding. (2 hours per week)
- Finding new friends - Browse profiles for 30 minutes, twice a week. (1 hour per week)
- Total maximum time I plan to spend on Facebook: 6 hours, 20 minutes.
step-4
Think of other things you could be doing with your time spent on Facebook. If you find yourself spending, say, 10 hours a week on Facebook, make a list of all the other things you could accomplish in that time. You could:
- get fit
- Spend real time socializing with people really in your life
- clean your room
- volunteer
- Read a book
- Listen to music
step-5
quit Facebook. If you've created a schedule and couldn't stick to it, or if you've decided that any time spent on Facebook is wasted, then you may need to quit cold turkey. This is a last resort, and is easier said than done. There are two options here. You can deactivate your account or delete your account:
- Deactivate your facebook Account - this lets you take a breather without losing the information; or
- Permanently delete your Facebook account - this is the real end, everything will go!
- If you've started any groups, transfer admin rights to someone you trust.
- Clear every last bit of information from your profile. Don't forget to remove your photo!
- Send an email to your Facebook contacts explaining your decision to leave. Include your current contact information so they can get in touch with you without Facebook.
step-6
Find alternatives to using Facebook. If you've gotten into the habit of using Facebook messages instead of email, update your email address book so you can get in touch with your friends and continue your correspondence outside of Facebook.
step-7
Find a Facebook substitute. A lot of people get addicted to Facebook because they check it when there's nothing else to do, like in between classes, or during a lunch break; then the curiosity spills over into time that should be spent doing other things, like studying or working. You need to find something to do during those little windows of time in order to prevent relapse. There are several ways to give yourself a "Facebook patch":
- Stay away from the computer as much as you can. For many of us, getting in front of a monitor is a default activity. Try to find other things to do that'll keep you away from the computer and therefore, Facebook. Keep a notebook. Meditate. Finger weave. Learn to do impressive tricks with a tech deck. Call your friends on the phone or do something fun with them in person. Anything that you can do anywhere and for short periods of time is good.
- If you're at a computer during critical relapse times, find another website to log onto and read instead of Facebook. Yes, you may get addicted to that instead, so try to find something that's actually a constructive pursuit, like checking news websites, learning a new word each day, sharpening your mental skills by solving a sudoku, practicing that foreign language you decided to learn...
Tips
- Keep a list of your Facebook schedule (if you have one) and your non-Facebook goals with you and in front of you at all times.
- Once you've discovered your capacity for being addicted to Facebook, you should probably avoid other social networking sites like MySpace.
- As with any task that involves discipline, it always helps to do it with a friend. One option is to have a trusted family member or friend do this for you.
- For those who found out you can re-activate your account, try this before you de-activate your account: Open up notepad and type in some random text (lskdjfd). Login to Facebook and change your password. Copy the text that you just typed in notepad in the password fields and change your password. Deactivate your account, and clear your clipboard history.
- If you are looking for a way to actively decrease the frequency of your Facebook visits, change your password to a long string of numbers. Write this down on a piece of paper, and place it somewhere that is annoying to reach or out of reach. This way, whenever you want to log on, you will need to dig out the paper for your password. This is to deter you from logging on by making it a chore. If you start to remember the numbers, just repeat the process.
- To keep updated about your Facebook friends' status updates, subscribe to your friends' status updates RSS feed in your email program or other RSS reader that you already use. For example, you can get this feed in MS Outlook 2007 where you can read what your friends are up to along with your email. This eliminates one major reason people regularly log in to Facebook.
- Stop using facebook mobile to update your status etc. Uninstall it from your phone if you have a downloaded version (ie. iPhone, Palm etc.)
- If directly after you open your internet browser, you start typing in facebook.com without meaning to; you just do it out of habit. You should probably cut back on the FB usage, having something so potentially useless (i.e. Facebook) taking up so much time in your life, it's probably a good decision to find something better to do. Read a good book or something, it will make you smarter, and make it easier to talk to girls in actual person also.
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