The Internet was able to transcend the limits of time and place, facilitated the process of human and civilized communication, and became an essential tributary in forming the social, economic, political, and cultural personality of people.
It also developed their knowledge and perceptions and facilitated transmitting and passing information and making decisions at the lowest cost. Among the websites, there are social media sites, the latest product of this revolution, these sites have become essential media and interactive tools that can be easily used by all classes of society and of all ages.
These sites have proven effective in performing social activities and achieving various forms of acquaintance and rapprochement. The most popular and influential of these sites is “Facebook” as it allows users to create their own page to communicate with others, conduct instant conversations, and exchange videos and clips.
Audio, images, and various types of files. With all the advantages that Facebook gives its users, like any other method of communication, it has its negative consequences.
One of these negatives is the issue of Facebook addiction, which has emerged as a major social and psychological problem because the individual spends long hours browsing this site without a logical justification for that.
One of the groups most affected by this site is the students. This site has become a major part of the student's life, as We see them sacrificing their studies, family relations, and money to satisfy their desires related to using this site.
Facebook Addiction
Facebook was launched in 2004 by an American student at Harvard University named Mark Zuckerberg, and since then, it has spread rapidly. It allows individuals to create their own space, post intellectual content, express opinions freely, and communicate with friends, so it is a society based on invisible relationships. It does not require a social skill, and it has become the window through which the individual can look outside.
This site has had a great impact on students so that they use it for long periods and in an exaggerated way, with which they cannot stop or give up using the site until it has reached the point of addiction. It is called Internet addiction because it combines in its symptoms some of the symptoms of real addiction, such as mood swings, feelings of malaise, desire for isolation, confinement around oneself, social withdrawal, and severing contact with the outside community.
The most affected group and attached to this problem are the students, which affects their academic level, missing school and university, lying to the family, neglecting social status and other interests and hobbies that they used to practice in the past.
Disadvantages of Student's Use of Facebook
1. Wasting Student Time
As soon as the student enters the Facebook site, they start moving from one page to another and write comments on the things they like or dislike that those pages post. They also navigate through their friends' pages to see what they contain, whether pictures, videos, or opinions they present to comment on them, and they will undoubtedly open conversations with unreasonably long friends. Then they don't feel the long time they wasted without any benefit.
2. Poor Social Skills and Living in a Virtual Life
The student spending a long time browsing Facebook pages leads to their distance and isolation from reality, the family, and the social environment, as they don't participate in any of the activities offered by the family or by the community to its children to develop their skills and experience through them.
3. Loss of Privacy
One of the most prominent negatives of using Facebook is the lack of privacy, as there is a high possibility of stealing (or hacking) the user’s page that contains their personal information, of course. In addition to other things of its own, such as photos and conversations with friends that can be used against the user in a way that offends them, this causes psychological, moral and possibly physical damage to that user.
4. Imitation of Public Figures and the Desire to Impersonate Them
As a result of browsing Facebook, the student may become obsessed with one of the public figures and celebrities because of following them closely. This causes them psychological harm as they forget their true personality and identify with the other imaginary personality and immerse themself in it. It may also cause social and security problems if they are discovered or someone files a report against them as an impersonator.
5. The Students Comparing Themselves with Others
People from different cultural backgrounds and social classes also share their daily activities on social media. The student begins to compare themself with others and sometimes dreams of exchanging places with them or becomes jealous of someone's success, or depression creeps into them as a result of their inability to achieve what others achieve.
Social comparison is the worst result of social media and hurts the psychology of students. It caused them various psychological illnesses to the extent that a large part of them rejected the life they lived and found a real problem in adapting to the real life in which they lived.
6. Posting Frustrating Content
Some members of the community deliberately publish content that is offensive to a certain group or immoral content or publish offensive comments against others that can affect students as well and thus affect their psyche and their educational attainment because their thinking is preoccupied with those opinions that were said to them.
7. Ethical Corruption
The unethical content posted by some users on Facebook is well known because students are in their teens, and young people are the most negatively affected groups, pushing them to the wrong path and doing bad actions that do not fit the moral standards of society.
8. Impact on Health
Spending a lot of time on Facebook by student, leads to fatigue and the emergence of health diseases due to radiation emitted by electronic devices, such as various eye diseases, it also leads to psychological diseases such as depression, frustration, conflict, and aggressive behavior in some cases as a result of being affected by the content published on Facebook.
9. Underachievement
Most of the studies conducted on the effect of Facebook on student achievement indicate that students who are addicted to Facebook are less successful than others. Spending time browsing Facebook will certainly take away study time and consume the body’s energy so that it becomes unable to perform the duties and tasks assigned to it. Students will also be unable to focus on obtaining information and suffering from distraction and constant wandering of the mind, and certainly, the weak ability to retain information for a long time and remember it at the exam.
How to Get Rid of Facebook Addiction?
1. Write Down the Pros and Cons of Your Facebook Usage
Calculate the time you spend browsing Facebook and what benefits do you get during this time. And what negatives do you find in it? And how does it affect your life? And what losses does it cause you?
2. Create Your System and Stick to It
Set breaks, study periods, work time, and replace the times you devote to browsing Facebook with other things you enjoy, such as exercising, reading a novel, or pursuing a hobby you love, in addition to the need to establish and stick to a strict health system. You can allocate an hour to browse Facebook to stay informed of the latest news or benefit from its information positively.
3. Live Your Real Life
Disconnect the internet from your mobile phone, set aside time to talk with family, go out for a walk with friends, follow up on your homework, and find serious study strategies that make you an enthusiastic individual to study.
4. Be Honest with Yourself
Identify the reason that makes you a person who enjoys and loves to browse Facebook: Is it just to waste time observing others, your need for virtual friends because you are unable to make real friends, want to stay away from community events, want to receive compliments through it, or something else? Knowing the cause is half the cure.
5. Believe in Yourself
You must know that browsing Facebook or posting your content about your daily activities and getting praise about it will not do you any good. Trust that only your achievements in reality and your continuous self-development can raise your value and achieve a prestigious position in society.
6. Family Duties
The family has the responsibility to monitor their children and watch the content they view on Facebook, in addition to organizing their time, following up on their studies well, and intervening when they notice any shortcomings.
In Conclusion
Social media sites, especially Facebook, have broken the barriers of geography, made the world a small village, and brought the different poles closer. However, it remains a double-edged sword, despite all the positives it has achieved, some negatives cannot be denied.
I t affected a significant number of students who did not know how to benefit from it positively, and they didn’t use it to develop their skills or culture to increase their knowledge; instead, they were negatively affected by it to the point of becoming addicted to it and lost themselves among its pages, so they stopped making efforts to meet their aspirations.
Therefore, this group must be supported and helped to get rid of this addiction and return to their real life and draw plans for its success.
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