Abhirupa Purkayastha – Simplifying Life

Facebook was everywhere in 2010 -from news to movies. It seems that the previous year saw the social-networking site making headlines for all the reasons one could name under the sun. Despite the issues over privacy and protection of personal information that cropped up frequently, Facebook had over 500 million users last year. 2010 also saw a myriad of news reports that claimed Facebook apparently played a vital role in the meteoric rise of (no not childhood obesity this time) but– syphilis, divorce and suicide (though not in any particular order).

The syphilis issue came up in Telegraph that claimed:- Facebook enables people to meet strangers easily which often leads to casual sex, and obviously more casual sex leads to more spreading of STDs.
This caused quite a furore among the internet users and as a result we saw tens of thousands of Facebook supporters blogging and commenting over the issue. I remember stumbling upon one such comment which said: Should I be wearing a condom when I use Facebook? Should I wrap my routers in a Trojan?

A survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that one in five divorces are linked to Facebook. You thought your wife didn’t see your flirty status messages, or didn’t know that you had recently connected with one of your old flames on Facebook. Huh! Facebook – The marriage killer! Yes, 66 per cent of lawyers cited Facebook as the primary source of evidence in a divorce case. MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites were also on the what-causes-divorce list. Remember Eva Longoria? Yes, the “Desperate Housewives” star, split from her sportsman husband Tony Parker after alleging that he was having an affair with a woman he kept touch on Facebook.

Aww! I never thought this simple-looking but so blue in color portal that we know as Facebook was capable of igniting so much passion. I must say, all kinds of passions ( Here I have deliberately used Red as the font color, RED =Passion, remember!):

• Old passion
• Office passion
• Passion for your colleagues’ spouses
• High school/ college passion
• Stranger passion which leads to STDs
• As of now I can think of these many passions that Facebook is capable of igniting in us. If you think there’s any more to the list then please do share!

And then there were news of a New Jersey Pastor Rev. Cedric Miller who told married church leaders to delete their Facebook accounts as according to him the social networking site was a “portal to infidelity”.

These were some of the news reports that linked Facebook with almost all the evils happening in the world.

Now, let’s see what search engines suggest.

If you type “Facebook Causes” on Google you see:

On Yahoo it’s like:

To set the record straight – people searching for something does not in any way indicate that ‘particular thing’ is actually happening.

If you ask me, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc do not kill marriages it’s the couples who do that. It’s like  living in the New York city where you can meet 80 billion possible dating partners but, it entirely depends on you whether you want to cripple your marriage, want to betray your partner’s trust or cherish your married life.

Do share your thoughts on this! Would love to hear what you have to say.