A HARD HABIT TO BREAK
dubai — There are no apparent signs that Facebook users are letting go of the social media network despite the mess it is currently in.
This is because, whether being a casual user or being a hardcore one, the itch is still there to take a peak at one’s account, for reasons ranging from trying to stay up-to-date with events to performing a regular post, something that has become part of the digital daily life.
“I don’t enjoy Facebook — never really have — and I think of myself as anything but an active Facebook user,” Minda Zetlin, columnist at Inc. com, says. “But in fact,” she continues, “I visit the site at least once a day and usually more. It’s just that everything is relative.”
Relative indeed. Facebook — and other relevant sites, for that matter — is now the de facto platform to make something known to the world. Whether it be the birth of your child, the passing away of someone, a major
Facebook is now an integral part of everyday life... it’s unlikely that it will lose a meaningful number of users Simon Kemp, Founder of Kepios
The first step to breaking any bad habit is to understand the psychological triggers that made you pick up the habit in the first place Daniel Wallen, Writer at Lifehack
corporate or political announcement, or just trying to brag about some food you’ve tried or place you’ve been to, social media is just the go-to place.
The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal could be, horrifyingly, just in the stage wherein we’re just scratching the surface of the dark world of the Web we are unaware of. What Mark Zuckerberg started in a dormitory has now morphed into a monster of sorts, something that — even for the most casual user — has this mind-numbing, cling-onto effect that won’t allow us to escape that easily.
Some parallels can be drawn from 24 years ago: in 1994, when America’s Big Tobacco firms went through a grilling at the US Congress, one executive claimed cigarettes were no more addictive than tea, coffee and Twinkies. “The difference between cigarettes and Twinkies,” a legislator fired back, “is death.”
Today, we’re seeing another industry giant, which has brought addiction to its users, under fire for a mess that has been there for quite a while, apparently sugar-coating the real deadly effects of it.
To be fair, Facebook was built on the noble concept of connecting people. As years went on, however, it became a platform for other things, which can simply be divided into two fronts: business, an arena to speak your mind out and a place to let the world know all your feelgood moments, among several others, on the good side.
The other, of course, is the side nobody in the right frame of mind would like to be on, much more on the receiving end of it: fake profiles, cyber-bullying, stalking and a place to promote the bad are just a few of the issues the tech giant has faced.
The present situation Facebook is in exposed the dangers of having our precious information mined and used for illicit purposes. There have been red flags in the past about this, but the platform’s billions of users — or, at least, the ‘good’ users — didn’t seem to mind.
Guilty pleasure?
“There is a science and psychology that explains why so many of us are glued to Facebook,” Courtney Seiter, a writer at blog site Buffer, says.
She lists several things that could explain why. Among them is that because Facebook taps the brain’s pleasure centre, which in turn compels us to react to what we see in it — the reason why we ‘like’, comment and expect to be given the same.
“And sometimes we ‘like’ in order to show solidarity or unity to a friend or acquaintance with their way of thinking,” Seiter adds. “Social media can be a way of gaining ‘virtual empathy’ — and that empathy can have real-world implications.”
Once you’re hooked — akin to
i don’t enjoy Facebook... but i visit the site at least once a day and usually more. it’s just that everything is relative Minda Zetlin, Co-author of The Geek Cap
vices — it’s hard to escape. However, if you feel you’re getting too much of the negatives, it may be about time to figure out how to wiggle free.
And just like quitting smoking, it’s a tough task to kick it.
“The first step to breaking any bad habit is to understand the psychological triggers that made you pick up the habit in the first place,” Daniel Wallen, a freelance writer, wrote in Lifehack.
He lists five of those ‘triggers’ in his piece: Facebook scrolling is a symptom of procrastination; Facebook over-sharing is a symptom of loneliness or indecision; Facebook creeping is a symptom of misplaced affection or unhealthy self-comparison; obsessive checking of Facebook notifications is a symptom of impatience or people-pleasing; and obsessive refreshing of your Facebook feed is a symptom of a fear of missing out.
The Pew Research Centre, in a recent report, says that Facebook is still the No.1 go-to social media site. In the United States, of the 66 per cent of adults who use the platform, 45 per cent say they get their news there. Twitter is a distant second with 15 and 11 per cent, respectively.
Wallen, a self-professed ‘recovering Facebook addict’, says any problem can’t be fixed if you deny that it’s there.
“Consciously acknowledging the habit for what it is... will break Facebook’s hold on you as long as you can be consistent.”
Hard to tell
Sure, the #DeleteFacebook movement has gained traction. But a study posted on The Next Web doesn’t seem to back this up.
In the research, the number of active users in Facebook’s top 10 markets actually grew — Brazil, fourth on the list, being the exception with an unchanged figure — during the 90-day period between January and March 2018.
India was tops with 280 million monthly active users (MAUs) last month compared to 250 million in January, and also had the highest growth rate of 12 per cent. Making up the top 10 are the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey and the UK.
“MAU numbers don’t tell us what people are actually doing on Facebook, and some of these active users may have logged in to simply to adjust their privacy settings,” Simon Kemp, founder of marketing strategy consultancy Kepios, says.
He points out that despite the healthy growth of MAU figures, the study shows a trend that people are using Facebook less frequently than they used to, and the amount of time that people spend on the platform during the average visit is also decreasing.
As at January 27, 2018, Facebook is still the undisputed leader in its sphere with a 2.167 billionstrong following. If you combine social networks with other platforms for messaging, chatting and the like, YouTube is a distant second with 1.5 billion users. Facebook’s own WhatsApp and Messenger are the only others that breached the 10-figure mark with 1.3 billion apiece; China’s WeChat is the closest with 980 million.
But, good luck with that #DeleteFacebook movement; Zuck’s empire is just too huge and too influential — not to forget that it also has its own army of supporters and defenders.
“The simple reality is that Facebook is now an integral part of everyday life for more than two billion people around the world,” Kemp stresses. “We may be worried about the implications of the Cambridge Analytica story — and what it means more broadly for our data privacy — but it’s unlikely that Facebook will lose a meaningful number of users because of this episode.”