Critical Thinking on Facebook - Personal Essay

Dear Editor

Mr. Hayden stated that his experience using Facebook is nothing but a mood killer. He expected more with an untroubled affair, doubtfully he felt rather unpleased. In his article he comprehended a research by the University of Michigan regarding the time spent on Facebook influenced people psychologically, the research deemed that the emotional resilience of those volunteers declined the more they used Facebook overtime as mentioned by one of the lead researchers. Furthermore, he took his wife as an exemplar that she regards Facebook as a chore.

I find Mr. Hayden’s argument to be substantial. The research by the University involved 82 young adults that were being monitored over a fortnight. The researchers conducted psychological examination, before and after the experiment, to scrutinize their levels of emotional health. Regardless how many online friends the volunteers have and how encouraging they were, has held a decline in emotional health. Whereas, Mr. Hayden’s wife, Wendy, she discovered that being a Facebook user is a tedious task, she frets that she might miss an important update from a friend, thus the chore. Moreover, not getting a response of the posts might cause an upset; feeling vexed.

I have a different opinion on this issue that is Facebook is not only a platform to share your sentiments with your acquaintances. Being on Facebook can make us happier, emotions shared online are contagious, especially positive emotions, they have stronger spreading power than negative ones shown in a research done in a scientific journal ‘PLOS ONE’. Otherwise known as the happiness effect. Facebook is a worldwide connectivity, which makes targeted marketing achievable without great effort. Accessing real-time information through a multiplying effect might even save a life. An article from ‘Mirror’ illustrated a woman, Sandi Allcock, who posted a photograph in Facebook saved her life after she was teetering on a ledge with a 1000ft drop beneath her.

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