January 22, 2012

WITH every new level of technology comes a corresponding wave of casualties.

From theft victims careless with their bank ATM cards to gullible folk cheated in online scams, the story is familiar enough.

So today we see the rise of Facebook addicts. The fact that this involves victims without criminal perpetrators does not make it any less serious.

Facebook addiction has been known to affect the psychological and physical health of its victims.

It also affects the personal relationships that victims had, or might have had, with others around them.

It is therefore a personal, domestic and social problem. The affliction is universally acknowledged by health professionals who have dubbed it Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD).

It is compulsive, invasive of one's personal life, distorts priorities, damages one's capacity to relate to others around them and disorientates one to reality.

There are withdrawal symptoms, pangs of “cold turkey” and it is all downright senseless and wasteful.

How can it then be addressed effectively?

Relying on addicts to stop their addiction is not going to work. Neither will legislation, since Facebook can all too easily be accessed through computers or smartphones.

With children and young adults, FAD is particularly pernicious because it eats away at their health in their formative years.

Yet, it is with young addicts that the problem is perhaps easier to avoid with prudent parental intervention.

Adults as parents or guardians therefore have a responsibility to ensure that those under their care do not fall victim to FAD. And as adults anyway, with or without others under their care, they need to set an example by not falling victim themselves.

If push comes to shove, there is always the off switch.

For Malaysians to “have the most Facebook friends in the world” may at first sound gratifying, but in reality it is a condition ridden with problems and liabilities.

The best friends tend to be those you encounter in the flesh. A “friend” in cyberspace may be very unreal, whether as a notional friend of a friend, a fictional character, or even a predator.

If Malaysians have the most virtual friends in the world, it may well be that we have the least real friends in the world. And that would be another tragedy in itself.

Man Tortures Daughter and Posts Pictures at Facebook

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/01/ohio-man-allegedly-ties-up-daughter-locks-her-in-cage-and-threatens-to-electrify-it/

Jan 21, 2012

Ohio Man Allegedly Ties Up Daughter, Locks Her in Cage and Threatens to Electrify It

An Ohio man is facing child endangerment charges after allegedly tying up his 12-year-old daughter with duct tape, sticking her in a dog cage as punishment, and then threatening to electrify it.

James Tapke, who was arrested Thursday, was ordered held on $50,000 bond during his arraignment Friday.

Police in Springfield Township, near Cincinnati, say Tapke, 41, wrapped duct tape around the girl’s hands and feet, then shut her in a large dog cage on Jan. 10.

While the girl was in the cage, Tapke allegedly dropped small amounts of water on her face, according to police.

Police said the girl’s 13-year-old brother let her out after about 20 minutes, but Tapke put her back in after she poured water on him.

Tapke then allegedly asked his son to get an electrical jumper pack from the garage. Tapke allegedly put the pack outside the cage and threatened to electrify it, although he never did, according to police.

The girl was eventually let out of the cage by her grandmother, who removed the duct tape from her hands and feet, police said.

Police were alerted after a concerned parent saw photos of the girl in the cage on Facebook and called the Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services.

Tapke’s attorney, Christopher Jackson, said the incident was a joke that got out of hand.

“I believe this was a joke that got out of control. This is why his son, who is 13, posted the pictures on Facebook, as a joke after this happened. … Maybe not the best joke in the world, but I believe that will come out in trial,” Jackson said, according to ABC News affiliate WCPO-TV in Cincinnati.

ABC News affiliate WCPO contributed to this report.

Those Facebook posts could cost you a job

http://www.philly.com/philly/jobs/137772838.html

Fri, Jan. 20, 2012

Steve JohnsonSan Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. — You might want to think twice about bad-mouthing your former boss on Facebook or posting those racy pictures of yourself from last night’s rollicking bachelor party. It could cost you a new job.

In a controversial twist on the exploding use of online social media, employers are poring over the websites to weed out job applicants whose posts reveal that they use foul language, take drugs, associate with gangs or have other questionable characteristics. Some employers are even demanding that job candidates disclose their social-network user names and passwords.

“We have seen pictures of people driving a vehicle with a beer in their hand, and that’s posted,” said Max Drucker, CEO of Social Intelligence of Santa Barbara, Calif., which helps screen the sites for employers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. “We found a picture of a person wearing a T-shirt with flagrantly racist remarks.”

While companies long have kept an eye on workers posting information that might hurt business, their screening of job applicants’ social-media pages is proving especially contentious. Employers say they do it to keep from making hires they’d later regret. But courts have yet to hash out the legal implications of the checks, and critics find the practice offensive.

“That’s completely inappropriate,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “It’s like saying, ‘Can I read your personal diary?’ I believe that chills free speech. If everyone thinks that to get a job they have to have a perfectly clean social networking site, no one will say anything to anyone.”

Another concern is that information dredged from social media sites may be inaccurate or may confuse two people with the same name. If mistakes occur, “how would the job applicant even know?” said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

In a survey last year of companies that screen applicants’ social media sites, 73 percent said they don’t give the applicants a chance “to explain questionable information,” according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Other surveys have found that anywhere from 18 percent to 63 percent of employers review social media sites to assess job candidates. But many don’t know that. A 2010 Microsoft study found that just 7 percent of those it surveyed in this country realized employers might peruse that data.

And while employers often find positive information about job seekers on the sites, that’s not always the case. Of more than 2,600 hiring managers surveyed by CareerBuilder in 2009, 35 percent had rejected candidates after finding objectionable material, including photos of them using drugs, bad-mouthing previous employers and lying about their qualifications.

Even posting information deemed to have a negative tone can turn off some employers, according to Vlad Gorelick, CEO of Reppler, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that helps social media users “manage their online image.” From what employers have told him, Gorelick said, it’s a bad idea to constantly post “I hate this” or “this really sucks,” because it suggests you might be negative at work. After all, he added, “Do you want to have somebody sitting next to you who is complaining all the time?”

It’s unclear how many employers do social-media checks. While Intel doesn’t, according to a representative, Hewlett-Packard declined to discuss the matter and representatives from two companies that advise employers on social-media screening wouldn’t identify the Silicon Valley companies they say engage in the practice.

One firm that provides such advice — Social Intelligence — has drawn federal scrutiny. In September, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., sent Social Intelligence a letter expressing concern “that there are numerous scenarios under which a job applicant could be unfairly harmed by the information your company provides to employers.”

Social Intelligence insists it does nothing wrong and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which examined its practices last year, found no reason to disagree. But with other consumer reporting agencies offering similar services, “it’s an area we are concerned about,” said FTC attorney Katherine Armstrong.

Many employers should be skittish about social media, too — particularly if the information they find prompts them to reject a candidate, some lawyers warn. Such sites often reveal a candidate’s race, gender, disability or other federally protected status, they note. So if the candidate doesn’t get the job, the employer could be sued for discrimination, forcing the company to prove that the social media revelations didn’t influence their decision.

On the other hand, these legal experts note, employers could be sued for not using social media to screen applicants — particularly if they hire a dangerous or otherwise unfit person, whose negative qualities could have been spotted through a social media check.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

As it is now, employers have limited legal guidelines to go on for what they can and cannot do, said Les Rosen, an attorney whose company, Employment Screening Resources of Novato, Calif., which advises hiring managers about such risks.

“We’re waiting for some court cases to come up” to clarify the issue, Rosen said. “It’s such a can of worms.”

———

SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES:

Think twice about posting images or other information an employer might view as evidence that you’re unfit to hire.

Use social-media privacy settings to minimize the chances of a would-be employer seeing posts you’d rather not reveal.

Realize that such privacy settings may not hide everything you post, since employers may demand your social-media usernames and passwords.

Only search a job applicant’s social media posts after getting the applicant’s consent.

Don’t use fake identities to gain access to social media sites.

Give the applicant a chance to explain or dispute the detrimental information found about them on social media sites.

SOURCE: Employment Screening Resources of Novato, Calif.

Study Says Facebook Making You Sad

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/feeling-sad-facebook-could-be-the-cause/

Facebook: Friends’ Happy Pictures Make You Sad?

Jan 20, 2012

There are plenty of reasons to feel down in today’s fast-paced, hectic world, and you wouldn’t think that the world’s most popular social networking site would be one of them. But that’s exactly what a new study at Utah Valley University has found.

According to the study, Facebook is making us sad. Why? It’s all about the kinds of pictures people to post on their pages.

Facebook photos generally depict smiling, cheerful people having good times, conveying a sense of happiness. Of course everyone likes to smile for the camera, so that good cheer may be inflated or false. As others view the photos, they may believe this conveyed sense of intense happiness is real, making them think that their friends are much happier than they are.

Sociologist Hui-Tzu Grace Chou said the study was inspired by her own experience: “Several years ago I started using Facebook because people invited me,” she said in a telephone interview, “and I started to realize my friends on Facebook looked really happy. That made me curious.”

Chou and Nicholas Edge interviewed 425 students, asking them whether they agreed or disagreed with such statements as “Many of my friends have a better life than me,” and “Life is fair.”

They also asked about the students’ Facebook usage, including how many “friends” they had on the site, and how many of those friends were really people they knew.

After controlling for race, gender, religious beliefs and whether the volunteers were unattached or in a relationship, the researchers saw a pattern: The more time students spent on Facebook, the more they thought others had it better than they did.

“Those who have used Facebook longer agreed more that others were happier, and agreed less that life is fair, and those spending more time on Facebook each week agreed more that others were happier and had better lives,” wrote Chou and Edge. “Furthermore, those that included more people whom they did not personally know as their Facebook “friends” agreed more that others had better lives.”

The study, which was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, also found that people who spent less time socializing with friends in cyberspace and more time socializing with them in real life were less likely to report they were unhappy.

“We’re not aware of the bias we have,” said Chou. “On Facebook we present ourselves at our best. People are affected and they don’t realize it.”

So if you are looking for a way to cheer yourself up, the researchers say you may do well to log off. Call your best friend instead.

Facebook is Crooked

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Facebook Owns You

The Onion Weighs in on Facebook

Facebook addicts should get out and socialise more