If half of our population is 23 years of age and below, then half grew up not knowing how it was to communicate the non-techie way – sending greeting cards via snail mail, writing love letters on pieces of stationery, reading the news in newspapers, calling on the telephone long distance.
Nine years ago, then Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook. Over one billion active users later, it is considered the most popular and powerful social networking site. Companies and other organizations rate the success of their products and services by the number of users who “like†on FB. Status, which used to refer to being single, married, divorced, or separated, has expanded its meaning to include “it’s complicated.†By keying in a name, one can find a long-lost friend or relative, find out how he or she looks like now, talk to them via Facebook Chat or videocalling, etc.
Poking has become the new handshake. Thanks to social networking sites, meeting someone in person has become a thing of the past. Making friends and renewing old ones is easy. Thus, meeting people and staying connected with classmates and friends is a major benefit of social networking sites. (http://www.pacific.edu/Campus-Life/Safety-and-Conduct/Safety-and-Security/Online-Social-Networking-Dangers-and-Benefits-.html).
But Facebook, despite and probably due to its immense popularity, has also been blamed for relationship troubles. “Facebook is cited in one out of every five divorces in the United States, according to the Loyola University Health System. Furthermore, 81 percent of the country’s top divorce lawyers say they have seen an increase in the number of cases using social networking evidence during the past five years, according to a recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML). Last but not least, Facebook is the unrivaled leader for online divorce evidence with 66 percent citing it as the primary source, the AAML said.†(http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-blamed-for-1-in-5-divorces-in-the-us/359).
In the United Kingdom, Facebook was cited in 33 percent of divorces in 2011. The results come from a survey carried out by the UK divorce website Divorce-Online.
“Facebook is increasingly being blamed as a reason for, or as evidence when, filing for divorce. In 2011, 33 percent of behavior petitions contained the name of the social network; this is a whopping increase from 2009, when only 20 percent mentioned Facebook.
“By comparison, Twitter only appeared in 20 petitions as part of behavior allegations, meaning it could only be blamed for 0.4 percent of the cases. (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-blamed-for-a-third-of-divorces-in-the-uk/6788).
Social networking sites (SNS) are means for people to connect to each other. But they do not cause relationships to break.
Relationships that eventually do break are strained from the start, but of course, FB can accelerate the development of new ones. One which starts as simple flirting by online chatting can turn into a full-fledged affair, as one source put it. Couples who truly love and respect each other simply do not flirt on FB or any site for that matter. They do not look for old flames on FB. They do not place themselves in situations that could endanger their relationship.
But with all its faults, including privacy issues, Facebook and the other popular SNS like Twitter (around 250,000 accounts were recently hacked), Instagram, MySpace, Friendster, etc. have changed the way people communicate. The world has become a smaller place. Even telecommunications companies consider SNS as threats to their businesses. Employers who used to treat social networking sites as distractions to their employees now employ SNS as marketing tools.
Good or bad, SNS like Facebook are here to stay. Parents probably just have to work harder to update their style of parenting and keep the values of their children intact. Couples have to work doubly hard to keep the flame alive. Individuals just have to make sure that before they join these SNS that they familiarize themselves with the privacy settings. The letter “P†in “PIN†does not mean ‘public,†says a sign posted inside an ATM. That also goes for SNS.
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