Anti-social behavior: The Facebook exodus

I’m curious…is this article meant to say anything specifically, or is it just a random statement with no context?

This video piece is flawed in that it fails to distinguish and clarify the difference between DEACTIVATING and DELETING your account. Deactivating your account only disables your access to it until you decide to reactivate it again. Any information, your friends, etc., will still be on Facebook. Deleting your account is what actually wipes your previous existence from Facebook, which can be done from this link: https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account, which I believe is inaccessible via hyperlinks within the site. I enourage visitors to this page to know this difference, and to realize this is their ideal alternative if they truly wish to separate themselves from Facebook.

Watch the video.

For me, the image just showed up as an image – there was no indication it was a video. I think others are experiencing the same thing.

Facebook too much? Take a day offline with us on 1.1.11. http://www.bigturnoff.org

This segment is sensationalist and confusing. The headline, Anti-social behavior: The Facebook exodus, followed by the introduction “People are defecting from the site in record numbers, often citing privacy concerns. Correspondent Daniel Sieberg files this report,” led me to expect information on security issues and huge amounts of people leaving facebook.

In reality this segment is about a man who worries that he wastes too much time on facebook even though he uses it to make professional connections and find out about news items he’s interested in (which in the “real world” would take much more time than on facebook). He has tried to leave facebook,but second guesses himself because facebook is so tricky with all the many steps it takes to end your facebook account (sounds like ambivalence and lack of follow through to me). Admittedly the man has gotten sucked into farmville, but how many people waste just as much time watching the Jersey Shore?

The segment goes on to say that to respond to the challenge of disconnecting from facebook, a new online service has been created to delete your account once and for all. And then you can “rejoin the real world.” What? Sorry, but facebook is no less the real world than reading a newspaper article online, sending an email to a friend, or collecting baseball cards.

Why not include a piece on how facebook Causes has led to the delivery of malaria nets in Africa, more drinking water in places that didn’t have enough, and even how facebook has helped people find jobs. Facebook is a networking tool. If you don’t like your network then you need to change it.

With the recent suicide of a Rutgers student after a video of him in a sexual encounter is posted online, and the man in this segment finally getting off facebook because his mother wants to “friend” him on facebook–maybe the real issue is how people’s behaviors differ online and offline. Do our ethics and morals stay the same in both spheres? Are we posting things online we wouldn’t want our mothers to see?

Of course facebook has its downsides including security issues, and there might even people who are truly addicted to it, but that’s not what this segment gets close to uncovering. Come on PBS….give us something more substantial.

Asocial, not antisocial.