Facebook and its wild usage by young generation today

Facebook and its wild usage by young generation today

We should use it with responsibility

Facebook is just everywhere, and here in urban India, every teenager of my age is just crazy about it. While Facebook really has its good ol' advantages such as easy communication between people from faraway places, finding like-minded folks over the net, sharing of useful news and information between people separated by vast distances in the physical world, the recent trend of Facebook usage has been a matter of concern to me.

Technology, as I see it, is a gift of science. Things like Facebook were beyond our wildest dreams even 12 years ago (when I was 6. But even then, people of 2001 couldn't think of possessing a smartphone with social networking capabilities that would give them ability to share their photos instantaneously over continents using nothing but their mobile networks). And indeed, Facebook, like Microsoft Windows (that has introduced the general population to the blessings of computer-education ad usage), GNU Linux (that has turned many of us into active developers and people with power to shape the future of the computing industry) and Google (that has unleashed the true potential of the internet), is a great blessing for all of us. But this must be remembered that while we shouldn't abstain from using it, overuse of such an important and powerful tool, alongside abusive and carefree usage, can really affect the world.

The advent of smartphones and Facebook mobile has complicated things even more. 

Let me elaborate my statement. For everything we do, using computers, both online and offline, bytes, kilobytes and megabytes are data are used. Facebook is no exception to his simple rule. When you're posting a photo, or just 'liking' another, or even updating your status, you're actually making the set of hardware and software process the data. And for processing data or information, energy is spent. It is true that with each succeeding generation, more and more bytes of data are being processed using the same amount of energy, that is, the energy-efficiency of technology is increasing, but simultaneously it is also true that the total load or amount of data left to processed is increasingly at a blazing speed. The reasons are threeway, economic and educational development of society empowering more to get connected, increase in human population and 'staying connected always' mindset of people.

Many of my Facebook-friends are very much irresponsible, and carefree about what they're doing. From typing silly things such as 'gud mrng frNNNZZZZZZZZ, LOLZZZZ' (and yeah, they're getting multiple likes and comments for this) to transliterating in Bengali facts related to their love life, who has crush on whom, etc. This consumes computational resources that would otherwise be spent for betterment of the literate and intellectual community.

Facebook isn't the entirely of life, we should try
concentrating on other activities as well

Another curse of this generation is transliteration. I am from West Bengal, India, and as such I see most of my Bengali friends typing Bengali using Roman scripts. Internet is a massive pile of information that is growing every single second, and one of the most beautiful things about it is that, most of what we call internet is ordered and organized properly. Imagine you're entering the URL of Facebook, www.facebook.com and something like Alibaba.com pops up, showing you ads of Arabian cats How would it feel? Whatever we're typing should be done with the proper script. If you prefer to type in Bengali, please do so, but using Bengali script. Transliterating things is not only offensive, it also prevents the search engine's ability to categorize things properly. Whatever you're doing, writing, posting , typing etc. should enrich the web, not make it more cluttered.

Ok, so these types of things are usually deemed 'cool' on Facebook
nowadays. Shame on those who misuse technology thus. 

I was mostly an IRC (internet relay chat) guy myself, with little interest in Facebook. But there's no way I can get posts by Prof. Brian Greene and Minister Manmohan Singh on IRC. As such, I had to remain active on Facebook. But every single day, I see piles of nonsense on my newsfeed, ranging from the same "Gud mrnz frnzzzzzz" (and the fools possibly fail to understand that white 'gud' is similar to 'good' in pronunciation, it is a very vulgar term in Bengali actually meaning a woman's genitalia) to "ki kr6o" (transliterated form of Bengali "What are you doing?").

You'd say, simply removing them would be enough, but it's not the same. If I individually remove them, it doesn't matter much. Also, how many can one remove?

Facebook has many advantages, and has brought all of much closer compared to the actual physical distances separating us. And we should be grateful for that. The netizens of today, like us, should learn to use lightning-fast technology properly, for constructive and creative activities. Lastly, a sense of responsibility much be associated with proper usage of social networking.

The world is growing at a fast rate, and if we continue to misuse such powerful technology thus, the future would only get worse.