jbaldy22 –
I don’t have the time or energy to keep refuting your posts over & over. The only reason I’m doing it – is Not to convince you, but that you shouldn’t influence others.
“1) Anything in excess is bad – alcohol in itself is an addictive substance facebook is not. Just because people like to do something and it drags them in does not make it an “addiction” case in point the APA still refuses to classify internet overuse as an addiction. Again you like asserting that things are similar that are in fact dissimilar.”
First of all, not everything in excess is bad, but Facebook IS!
If you do some research there are Psychologists that are calling it the way it is -“Internet Addiction Disorder”, “Facebook Addiction Disorder”. And the reason they are doing this is because people like you shouldn’t say these things aren’t possible to be addictions and pointing to the APA’s classification as proof. I don’t know if you really think the APA holds these things aren’t addicting or you’re trying to manipulate others. But the APA holds these things are addicting substances, but feel they don’t need their own classification because they fall under the classification of “Impulse Control”.
“2) I was pointing out an obvious flaw in the study – it is what we call a skip in logic. The study assumes that all the kids involved were normal prior to facebook use and that facebook was the only cause. It also assumes that facebook overuse causes narcissism and other mental issues and not vice versa. That is what is called a correlation – causation flaw. As the study does not mention numbers we are left to our own devices.”
Funny, you mean only you know how to do a study, not them. Actually if you would have looked it up -they didn’t do this at all. They used questionares. They asked people about their Mental Health history and then they looked at their responses about Facebook. Those without Psychological histories were still found to develop narcissism and other bad traits. Those with Psych histories -it exacerbated their conditions! But, nice try!
“3) articles and studies on internet addiction predate facebook – there were actually a bunch done in the late 90’s. There were studies on the affects of computer games, staring at a screen for too long, and how google is changing the way our brains are wired and that people dont know how to think or do research properly anymore. A simple search through google scholar will provide you with tons of reputable articles on the subject. I dont think the cr will allow for the links though so i will not attempt to post them.”
You could have cut & pasted them. But like I told you, yes there are other problems with excessive Internet usage esp. with regards to social networking (which FB is a part of), gambling sites and others. So what is your point? Yes, there are other dangers on the Net, but I don’t think this makes the whole Net bad -but obviously the Rabbonim disagree with this opinion. And even though they disagree – there are still many Frum sites and many Frum people on the Net.
“4) with the gambling thing again just because gambling and drinking are addictions does not make anything else you assert addictions.”
Again, it’s Not me who is making these assertions -it’s many Psychologists and other Mental Health Professionals!
“5) Even if we assume that facebook is an addictive substance – which i dont believe it to be so – it is still not a reason to not have it anymore than it is a reason not to have cell phones despite that fact that people check it/are on it all day. the allure is to be constantly connected socially which is a basic human need. It is like saying people shouldnt eat food or breath because you might get addicted (you see what I just did there?)”
It definitely is true that some people are becoming addicted to their devices, like cells, and this is also talked about in the research, but why does this negate FB as a problem? And the argument that cells are equal to FB is ridiculous. There are a lot of reasons for people to have cells like in emergencies (IE -911), but I know of No other reasons to have FB than social ones. It is addicting and causes bad traits (Middos), like narcissism and I’m not the one saying this – the Research is!