Sometimes Facebook and parenting don't go together

18 February, 2011

FACEBOOK, WHICH does not need any introduction has re-defined 'friendship', by making a place for itself in the lives of millions of people across the globe - complicating the boundaries between education and entertainment in the process.

FACEBOOK, WHICH does not need any introduction has re-defined the term friendship, by making a place for itself in the lives of more than 500 million people across the globe, and by complicating the boundaries and balance between education, entertainment and personal growth.

On any normal day, as soon as we get free from our work, the first thing we do is to switch on our laptops or PCs, and log onto the site. Even if we want to open some other site, the first priority is often social networking websites such as Facebook.

People having spare time and couch potatoes often spend an entire day on the site - testifying to their addiction. Not only can we connect with all our friends and family members people play games and applications. Apart from all this, we get to share our photos and videos with our friends and family.

Facebook, with time gave a new definition to friendship, which was not just limited to a selected group of friends. Chain friendships, based on the number of mutual friends saw an all time rise. Facebook also gives its users the luxury of grouping its friends. This largely helps in chatting with people as per our mood. There are many other good options that this site provides us with and makes our work easier.

Photo tagging is very popular on Facebook. Take for instance, on friendship day, almost everyone uploaded images quoting 'best friends forever' and tagged all their friends whom they wanted to wish.

Recently there was a news that the Facebook will start third party sharing because of which all the personal information of the accounts would be visible to everyone. But this could have negative consequences.

Some time back, there was news that about a thousand Facebook accounts were hacked and the hacker had provided that information for download on the other sites. Such an action shook up people's faith on the site, and many wanted to either deactivate or delete their accounts permanently, raising a question on Facebook's security apparatus.

What's equally worrying is that social networking websites such as Facebook have made serious inroads into the Indian social fabric. For instance, the site is giving jitters to parents who have a common complaint about the effects it has on their child's academic performance.

Students, instead of giving their time to studies are logged on this site, chatting with their friends and playing games. They themselves dont even know what they are upto and eventually end up wasting their precious time. Some parents even resort to the steps like not giving access to the internet to their children.

Facebook just like any other social networking site has positive and negatives attached tom its use. However, it's upto parents and teachers to ensure a balanced approach towards suring social networking websites.