Sean Parker, ex-president Facebook, said he now seems to have enough reasons to feel worried about the exponential growth the social site has achieved over the years. And what is worrying Parker more is that Facebook’s growth has been achieved by ‘exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.’
With the over billion-plus users to its credit, Facebook can well be considered the single biggest congregations of individuals in the virtual world. That again is exactly what Facebook had set out to achieve, of serving as the meeting ground of people cutting across barriers of race or region.
However, Parker said he is not sure what the consequences of it will be like going forward from here. Now only has Facebook served as a magnet for new users, the various interactions within it such as likes or comments tend to draw people in even more and keep them engaged; so much that the virtual mode of communication is something accorded more value than interactions in real life.
In fact, the implications of social media and its effects on the human mind can serve as a new branch of study for the social scientists or psychologists. Facebook itself has often found itself at the receiving end of the size it has achieved and the huge and diverse user base it caters to.
What has turned out to be most tricky for Facebook is to have all groups of people on board even if they have views and beliefs that directly go against those of another group. While that in itself is an achievement for the social site, the manner in which it has often been found to wield immense influence on the personal life of individuals is often being considered a worrying trend.
In fact, one of the very core principles that define the functioning of the company is to keep people addicted to the site. In that, the likes and comments serve as, in Parker’s own words, as ‘a little dopamine hit every once in awhile’ to keep people glued to the site even more.
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So far so good but now that Facebook has emerged as the single largest social media site on earth, it is time for all to find out in what ways the site has come to effect the way we think and solve issues. Maybe that is going to be imperative before the social site goes on to scale newer heights of people to people interactions.
