1. It turns your life into a photo documentary.

 

Social media users are ever interested in taking, uploading, tagging and commenting pictures. Reality becomes a resource for building an image. Sightseeing, partying, working etc. are photographed with for the sole purpose of being displayed on FB.

 

How sincere are we while uploading pics to our galleries and more importantly, how sincere were we while smiling for the camera?

 

2. It makes you self-centered.

 

Over time, building a social media profile becomes an increasingly conscious and time consuming habit. Will my taste in books be deemed more eclectic if I add the title I’ve heard about from my nerdy cousin? What if I slip a non-popular link, will my 800 friends abandon me?

 

3. It makes you a hypocrite.

 

Befriending, joining fan groups, liking etc. – these things are given away so easily they are stripped of any meaning. Facebook users are united in a fundamental lie, that exchanging mouse clicks is equivalent to caring. A community of pretending to do and to feel.

 

4. It makes you a social snob.

 

With an average number of “friends” revolving around 400, it seems obvious that the vast majority of people you expose your carefully designed profile to, are in fact complete strangers, whom you have befriended by chance or snobbism of raising the number of “friends”.

 

You don’t have 400 friends. You probably have about 2-4. Two to four people who genuinely care for you, not your profile. Why do you put them in the same category as someone you used to know in primary school (and hated, but added for statistical reasons)?

 

5. It stresses you out.

 

With all the work put in designing and polishing your profile, it would seem there is nothing to do but sit back, relax, and await letters of congratulation for the fabulous life you have been leading. The absence of these letters may be the reason why Facebook users live in constant stress.

 

Someone out there is viewing your profile this minute judging with malice some embarrassing details you have failed to hide, cover or delete. Tremble with fear!

 

Adam Rogoziński