The Positive Effect of Facebook Addiction

I was trying to think of what I should blog about next and was making no headway, so I decided to procrastinate by going to Facebook! Immediately I thought to myself, 'wow, I really do check Facebook way too much,' and started to think about why it is that so many of us are addicted to Facebook. I realised that when it comes down to it, I do in fact use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with my friends, not to waste time.

I think that it is an innate curiosity about our friends that makes us check Facebook whenever we want to procrastinate. Facebook made a smart move by putting a news feed up as the home page instead of the profile page. I definitely spend a lot of time randomly checking things that appear on my news feed, and sure enough it serves the intended purpose of informing me of my friends lives. If you think about the number of times you know what someone is up to because of Facebook, it is not insignificant.

Of course there is also the issue of intentionally scouring a particular person's profile in order to figure out more about them for whatever reason. All of the detail people put up on their profiles makes this rather straightforward. It is also important to realise that your pictures on Facebook are probably even more telling than all of the information you have posted about yourself. In this particular case, it is obvious that stalking can be for reasons other than trying to get news about a friend. However I won't bother discussing my thoughts on the negative aspects.

Overall, in spite of the fact that it seems to you that you are simply wasting time browsing Facebook, in reality, I believe it is actually a good thing that to procrastinate so many people are taking an interest in their friends lives. Then again, maybe I am simply justifying to myself the endless hours I spend on Facebook?