Category Archives: Lifestyle

When Facebook stock rises, humanity falls

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On Thursday, July 27, 2017, Facebook’s stock jumped nearly 7% in pre-market hours on news of earnings beating estimates and higher numbers of active users.

Good news for stock speculators, bad news for society.

Facebook, in my opinion, is the most unethical of the big “FANG” tech stocks.  It’s a company whose chief product is literally people’s private information to be sold to big corporations and corrupt governments.  It’s a company whose business model should fail spectacularly when its users come to their senses. However, a rising Facebook stock price has much more sinister correlations.

I’ll leave it up to Computing Forever’s well-reasoned videos that share my sentiments about the “social media bubble” to explain how rising social media stock prices are correlated to degenerate, anti-social behavior such as narcissism, groupthink and detachment from reality:

I quit Facebook over seven years ago coming to the same conclusions as Computing Forever. Technology can be great when it is used to advance the human condition. Facebook and social media is the metaphorical “atom bomb” of the new millennium — a highly destructive technology that serves to destroy humanity, perhaps not physically, but psychologically.

Is Facebook and “social media” contributing to the rise of social isolation?

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A recent New York Times article has noted:

Since the 1980s, the percentage of American adults who say they’re lonely has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent.

And the article concludes with a hypothesis:

A great paradox of our hyper-connected digital age is that we seem to be drifting apart. Increasingly, however, research confirms our deepest intuition: Human connection lies at the heart of human well-being.

Facebook and all its superficial interaction — the accumulation of “Likes”, “Friends” and vapid selfies — has had negative ramifications on real, personal interaction. Meaningful relationships require personal interaction, and happiness generally relies on having meaningful relationships. It is no wonder people are feeling lonelier and less happy despite being so-called “connected” by social media.

It is time to abandon Facebook, abandon the endless selfies, and go back to living in the moment with good company.  It is time to put down the smart phone and the anti-social media, and start talking face-to-face.

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You can find good company and play a game with them at GameSlush.com.