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.
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