Are PRs And Journalists Addicted To Facebook?

Posted by Ciaran Norris at Thu, 23/10/2008 - 10:44am in Internet

New research releases yesterday suggests that up to 10% of the UK population are in danger of becoming addicted to Facebook. According to David Smallwood from the Priory:

The problem with Facebook is it's all about acquisition and this is an addictive process.
Acquisition of friends is like any other fix but it's competitive you judge yourself by how many friends you have online. You go out of your way to amass friends and that means people bend out of shape and become something they are not.

This is obviously very worrying news and should be taken very seriously. Or at least it would be if it weren't for the fact that I have a feeling that the real reason for this research is simply to generate some PR for the Priory. For just as alco-pops lead to a boom in binge drinking, so the rise of Facebook has resulted in a binge - by PRs & journalists on stories 'related' to Facebook.

Just recently it was reported that a man killed his wife because she changed her status to 'single' on Facebook. This was obviously a tragic incident but reading the reports I couldn't help thinking that the fact that the man was drunk & high on cocaine may have had more to do with this terrible incident than what his wife had done on the social networking site.

On a much lighter note there was the story about the Australian whose claim to have been off sick from work was challenged when his boss saw his Facebook status, which read "Kyle Doyle is not going to work, **** it i'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!" Whilst this story did cause me to chuckle, as well as wonder whether his employer might not want to reconsider employing him at all as he's obviously not the sharpest tool in the box, it also goes to show that all it seems to take to get into the news these days is having the word Facebook in the headline.

Surely the most extreme recent example of this was the following headline:

How Facebook Is Destroying The Nuclear Family

Really? Wow. And here was me thinking that, to quote Mashable, the social media blog:

Facebook is a phone. Facebook is a letter. Facebook is a means of communication.

Facebook is no more capable of breaking up the nuclear family than it is of causing a deranged man to kill his wife, or an alcoholic to fall off the wagon. But as long as it guarantees column inches, it seems that journalists & PRs alike will continue to give the public their Facebook news fix.

Ciarán Norris is the SEO & Social Media Director of our partner company Altogether Digital, Engine's integrated digital agency.

Header image: Moe on flickr

Tagged with: Facebook, journalism, PR, Social media, web 2.0