Facebook Stalkers

Gabriel Montelongo Mr. Segura English 1301. 001 18, February 2013 The Book of All Evil There is no denying that social networking is at its finest. With over 1 billion users, Facebook has pushed itself into part of everyday lives. However, Facebook isn’t all flowers and butterflies. A website that stalkers use to rub one off to whoever they stalk, should not be perceived as a good thing. Neither should it be considered a good thing when a college student tries to write his essay, and keeps getting distracted by notifications.

Facebook is a tool used for stalking, addiction, but worst of all, procrastination. One of the scariest thing about Facebook is the stalkers. Facebook has made stalking easier with the use of one of its features called “Lists”. Basically what this feature does is it allows the user to single out anyone in the friends list, and stalk anyone that has been added. The stalker can even single out what kind of updates a person has; such as photos, posts, and recent locations visited.

People that use Facebook should think twice about what they share with the world. On the bright-side, Facebook does allow the ability to block stalkers, but it is rendered useless if the stalker decides to fake a new account. If anyone out there has an interest in stalking, Facebook would be the first place they would look. When awkward, socially-undeveloped, cave-dwellers want to make friends, they use Facebook. They proceed to add pretty, young women, in hopes that they get a chance to be with them.

However, that almost never happens, so these people then become angry and delusional. This is how stalkers tend to form over Facebook. These stalkers then proceed to stalk their rejecters, and then later end up in creepy stalker stories. This happens almost every day on Facebook, seriously. Social networking has become so common, that not many think about how they are being manipulated. Facebook has this control over people, using something called “notifications”.

People post updates on their page, and if people think it’s cool, then it’ll get “likes”. Notifications are then sent to the person telling them that someone liked their update. That right there encourages the user to post more updates. The more likes that people receive, the more it makes them want to update their status. This is how it keeps its users; through making them think that people actually care about what they are saying. Facebook manages to keep its users through a clever, but mischievous design.

Though widely recognized as a place for friends, Facebook is more like a spreading of disease. Through mischievous design and manipulation, Facebook can actually cause addiction. A reward system of notifications and likes can make a person feel like something was accomplished through something as simple as a status update. This accomplishing feeling make the self-conscious Facebook users feel accepted through having their statuses “liked”, and will try to reanimate themselves in search of that same feeling.

Facebook addiction is now being recognized as a legitimate addiction, and will soon find itself in future psychology books. Not only is Facebook perfectly designed for stalkers, but also to distract students from finishing homework. Facebook has a billion plus users, a majority of which are teenagers and young adults. Distracting a kid couldn’t be easier with Facebook. Give a pre-teen a website full of friends, and that pre-teen could be on it for hours.

The same effect happens with young college students; only the college student knows that he has an essay due Wednesday. Said student will then proceed to write the essay, only to get distracted by friends on Facebook. It is a horrible feeling when students know that not much time is left, and begin to hate themselves for procrastinating. An evil that every teenager in this day and age has to deal with, every day of their lives. Facebook is a curse; one that destroys us from the inside out.

Never mind the fact that almost one in every five divorces have been Facebook related, it creates stalkers that could eventually evolve into serial killers. Facebook breeds addiction and manipulates our already screwed up society. It has students thinking that they will only be on for five minutes, which then becomes an hour. Facebook is itself a problem that causes even more problems. A problem that’s here to stay until a new socializing website comes and takes over, and causes even more problems.