The document discusses Facebook addiction, noting that over half a billion people log onto Facebook daily and the average user spends around an hour on the site. It outlines signs of addiction like constantly checking for updates and prioritizing Facebook over other commitments. A study developed the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale to diagnose addiction based on how often users experience feelings like an urge to use Facebook more or using it to forget problems. The document advises that admitting you have a problem is the first step, then limiting daily usage and treating Facebook as a pastime rather than necessity can help overcome addiction.

2. Can you stay for a Month without
logging onto FACEBOOK?
For a week?
How about a day?
Seems difficult???

3. • A recent study at the Chicago University's Booth Business
School revealed that social media is more addictive than
cigarettes and alcohol.
• Talk of social media and Facebook: The largest social
networking website in the world with More than a billion
monthly active users to its credit, is definitely going to be
the center of any discussion.
• With more and more people getting obsessed with the
premier social networking website, terms like Facebook
Addiction Disorder (FAD) and Facebook Overdose (FOD)
are fast becoming popular.

5. Are You Addicted to FACEBOOK?
• You spend more than an hour on Facebook-at a stretch, or
in short episodes over regular intervals.
• You can't seem to stop thinking about Facebook updates
and your Profile pic likes,comments when you are offline.
• You check Facebook for updates and comments after every
hour at your workstation, or on your cell phone.
• You look forward to getting home in the evening so that you
can see what is happening in cyberspace (on Facebook to be
precise.)

6. • Your Facebook wall is full of status updates, comments, and
applications that you just used.
• You can't go for a day without using Facebook; even the thought of
this makes you go into a sort of depression.
• You give priority to Facebook over your commitments in
professional and personal life.
• Your day ends with you checking Facebook for that one last time
and bidding people ‘Gud ni8' through your status update.
• And lastly, you wake up in middle of the night to see whether
anyone has commented on your ‘Gud ni8' status, or liked it.

7. • If you have been doing any of these things frequently, it might
mean you are suffering from Facebook Addiction Disorder, or you
are at least vulnerable to it.(Though it's a non-medical term as of
today, it's bound to make it to the American Psychiatric
Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders(DSM), sooner or later.)
• It may seem harmless to get involved in virtual life, but there is a
limit to it. Beyond that, it is more likely to result in some serious
consequences on your mental health and social life, and therefore,
you need to 'do something about it' as soon as possible.

9. Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD)
• Facebook and other similar social networking websites are meant
to help people and use full in so many ways. All these activities are
no doubt enjoyable, but As you start spending more time
online, you invariably start neglecting yourself and the
people around you; this is where Facebook Addiction
Disorder sets in.
• Though this is not considered a medical condition as yet, going by
the current trends it wouldn't be surprising if it is included in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
sometime soon. After all, Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is one
of the proposed inclusions to the due for publication in May 2013.

10. • A person who spends an hour on social networking
websites every day cannot be deemed an addict, but
what about a person spending 6 hours a day, or so?
• The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, devised by a
research team under Dr. Cecilie Schou Andreassen at
the University of Bergen, is believed to be an apt
diagnostic tool for Facebook addiction.

11. • Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale
• As a part of Facebook addiction diagnosis, the users are subjected to six statements, and told to grade these
statements as (i) Very rarely, (ii) Rarely, (iii) Sometimes, (iv) Often, and (v) Very Often.
• You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook.
• You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
• You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems.
• You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
• You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
• You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.
• If the user grades any four, or more, statements as 'Often', or 'Very Often', then the same may hint at the
possibility of an addiction. Again, that would just be a sign of addiction, as the problem is yet to be added to
any medical dictionary. Like we mentioned in the beginning, there are numerous signs of addiction that we
fail to notice even when they are pretty obvious.

13. Facebook Addiction Statistics
• Data released by the company shows that approximately 584 million users,
which is more than half of its registered users, log on to their account every
single day. The advent of cell phones has further contributed to this
obsession, with more than 600 million users logging-in through their cell
phones every month.
• A study at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, revealed that users on an
average spend 75 minutes a day on Facebook.
• Gender-wise breakup of the data showed that Men spend 64 minutes &
women spend 81 minutes on this website every day.
• If an average user logs in on Facebook 6.1 times a day, as this Swedish survey
reveals, there must be users who do it far too often say every half an hour
and start feeling restless if they can't.

14. • Furthermore, this study also revealed a few more startling facts, like
85 percent of the respondents said Facebook had become a daily routine for them
70 percent of the users admitted that they log in every time they start their
computer
67 percent revealed that they log in just to kill time
• There is no dearth of studies, which highlight our obsession with Facebook. With
such statistical data at our disposal, it becomes obvious that Facebook addiction is
for real and has, in fact, gone way beyond a simple obsession. That also explains
the newly coined non-medical term Facebook Addiction Disorder.

15. How to Deal With this Addiction
• As in case of any other addiction, the foremost thing to do in this case is to
admit that you are suffering from it, and understand that it can affect your
life. You will be able to make headway in your Facebook de-addiction
resolve only when you are convinced of its ill-effects on your life.
• The next step is to decide how much time you want to spend on Facebook
every day, or whether you want to do that on a daily basis at all. The lesser
time you spend, the better it will be.
• You will have a strong urge to check it every once in a while when you are in
the office, before you go to sleep, early in the morning, etc. You will have to
make sure that you don't fall prey to such urges. The chances of you falling
prey are more when you have an easy access,Like FB app in mobile .

16. • Abstinence is the best bet when it comes to some addictions, but
to abstain, one has to have a strong reason backing the step. In
this case, you need to take a note of the damage social
networking is causing your actual social life. You need to treat
Facebook-ing as a pastime activity, rather than a necessity, and
you will be able to get rid of this addiction within a few days.
• Remember that Facebook addiction is just a facet of Internet
addiction, which can go much beyond Facebook itself. Internet
addiction is a broad concept encompassing addiction of social
networking websites, like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and
MySpace, as well as addiction of online dating, video sharing,
blogging, and random surfing.
• Getting involved in the virtual world is not a bad thing, but
getting involved to an extent wherein you ignore your
commitments definitely is.

17. Thank You
Santhosh Yadav.D