Facebook Addiction Disorder Syndrome

Lately, there is a new non-medical term for a disorder called Facebook Addiction Disorder(FAD). Have you also been hit by this disorder yet? Face book is one of the leading social networking sites available today. It has approximately 500 million users to date. According to a survey, atleast half of its users log on to their Facebook accounts every single day without fail. It is even more popular than other social networking sites like orkut and Twitter because, along with helping you to connect with friends, it also has many innovative games like Farmville, Mafia Wars etc and other applications such as 'Make your own sketch', 'How popular are you?' and thousands more of the sort which are not available in any other networking sites. Irrespective of age, most of the people nowadays start their day by checking their Facebook accounts.

Games like Farmville, Cityville etc helps you to make your own farm, become the mayor of a city that you created, adopt virtual pets, send virtual gifts etc. These games have become so addictive that sometimes people forget that it is just a virtual life and that they have an actual life waiting where lot of chores are yet to be finished. I've heard of husbands who get irritated with these games because their wives are so enthusiastic about playing that they don't even have the time to make tea in the evening after the husband arrives from office. Also, there are and unbelievable number of people who put real cash into such games to buy pets for their farms, houses for their cities etc. They don't realise that it is such a waste to spend hard earned money on such games. By the time they realise this, that is when they finally get bored of the game, it is too late.

Regardless of all the problems, Facebook definitely is a great medium to keep in touch with friends and renew old friendships which had gone missing somewhere down the lane. One gets immense happiness and excitement when he/she is able to revive an old contact and rebuild relationships. Talking of friendship, there are also people who send friend requests 'only to increase their friend lists'. Surely, every person on Facebook would have got at least one friend request from a stranger with a comment as such - 'Hi, would you like to be friends with me?'. In some cases, accepting such requests could land you in trouble too as the anonymous sender could tamper with your information and photos. Young children and teenagers especially should never give their personal details such as their address, phone number, email id etc in such sites which tempt trouble makers to play pranks on them and even tarnish their image in society. Peace of mind is more important than trying to project yourself as 'popular' by adding strangers also in your friend list.

Facebook has also triggered many people to start photography as a hobby. People have started to buy professional cameras to take creative photos and upload them in their accounts. It is also a good forum to showcase your talents in other creative skills like art, painting, graphics etc. Those who are good at singing record their songs and put it up and await for numerous comments complimenting their talent.

Here are some of the symptoms for Facebook Addiction Disorder:

1. The first thing you do in the morning is to check your Facebook account.
2. Whenever you are not online, you daydream of all the comments and status updates that have been received recently.
3. You spend hours and hours on Face book (or in short waste a lot of precious time).
4. Your day ends only after a last check of your Facebook account and wishing everyone 'Goodnight' as a status update.

These are just few of the symptoms which could state that you are suffering from the disorder. Though it doesn't seem very harmful to be too much involved in the cyber life, ultimately it will surely have bad consequences by affecting both your mental state and your social life. It is definitely not worth it when this addiction is at the expense of your professional commitments as well as personal life. Once you have realized that you have become addicted to both Facebook and the Internet in general, one has to make necessary changes by allotting specific time in a day for surfing and stick to this allotment with utmost determination. During the non-alloted times, if you feel the urge to go online, control that urge and instead spend that time with your family and friends. Yes, it is true that even through Facebook you are spending time with your friends by chatting and keeping in touch but nothing beats the personal touch!!