14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has 1.32 billion monthly users and 829 million users who log in every single day. The number of mobile users has also managed to rise quite a bit. 1.07 billion people also check out the network over their mobile devices each month, while 654 million do it daily.
While the company said last year that people spend about 17 minutes on the network each day, the number has more than doubled this time around to about 40 minutes. And that’s awful.
If we needed any more hints that we all need to get a life, this was it. 40 minutes per day spent on average on Facebook?! That’s about how long it takes to finish maybe 30 pages of that book you started a month ago, but never had time to read. That’s about how long it takes to prepare a medium-difficulty dinner. That’s a brief outing with your actual friends.
More alarming, however, is that this is the average amount of time spent on Facebook, and not the longest. This means that there are entirely too many people spending hours upon hours upon hours on Facebook.
While socializing online has its advantages, especially considering how busy life is in this day and age, but it shouldn’t replace human interaction.
A study conducted by Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at California State University, has shown that spending too much time on Facebook and other social media alternatives can negatively affect the health of children, preteens and teenagers, making them more prone to anxiety, depression and other disorders. Furthermore, this also affects their grades.
For young adults, a lot of time spent on Facebook can reduce the sense of well-being and satisfaction with life.
“On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it,” reveals another study conducted by the University of Michigan.
The list is probably endless on what effects spending too much time online can have on one’s life. Such studies can be conducted for a long time and we’ll likely going to get a lot of similar results.
That being said, things aren’t likely to get any better soon. Better for us all, that is, because Facebook intends to make life better for itself by bringing in even more users.
There are some 2.77 billion Internet users in the world, a rough estimate that is up for debate. Even so, this is enough to give us an idea about the impact of the social media phenomenon in the world since nearly half of the people surfing the net have a Facebook account they check monthly.
Facebook won’t say how many accounts have stopped being active, but it’s quite likely that there’s a rather large group of people who tried it out and quit.
Are we all spending too much time on Facebook or is this the new “normal” for the world we’re all living in and nothing more? That’s for each individual to decide for themselves, in the end, so what will you do?