Are you happy with Facebook? Many declaring ‘break-up’ with SNS site

Are you happy with Facebook? Many declaring ‘break-up’ with SNS site

A 40-year-old office worker, only identified by her surname Hong, recently marked her 400th friend on the Facebook in a small event, two years after signing up with the social networking service. Dozens of netizens applied to be friends with Hong for a day as she gave notice that she will give a gift certificate to whoever became her 400th Facebook friend. Thanks to the event, she is likely to have 500 friends in less than a week after she surpassed the 400 mark. But she has got into trouble. She has found a flood of unwanted content on her account. The news feed or timeline of Facebook has been occupied by election campaigns of Facebook friends seeking to run in the April 11 National Assembly elections, as well as PR for commodities. “I'm fed up with my crowded Facebook, like a noisy market,” she said. “I'm considering quitting or scrapping connections with some friends." Unlike her original intent to enjoy the site with some friends, Facebook has become headache for her. An estimated 5 million have enjoyed communication through Facebook in Korea, according to a local tally. The rapid growth of the Facebook population has also created problems, such as messier news feeds and endless updated applications, prompting a growing number of users to leave the social networking service. “There is nothing to post, nor reactions to my postings or useful information from others,” said a netizen, who quit the service for such reasons. “There are always a flood of show-off or happy stories of others, like travelling or marriage," another user said, adding that he felt hurt from the stories of Facebook friends who were successful. Netizens begin to feel less happy when the number of their friends exceeds an average 354 on Facebook, according to a research paper submitted to a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego, Calif., earlier this month. In the research conducted by the IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, researchers asked a sample group of Facebook users between 18 and 65 to read some of their friends' status updates. Afterward, those Facebook users rated their lives as much less satisfying than people who didn't check their news feed first. When reading friends' continuous 'happy stories parade' on news feeds more and more, one's happiness drops. It pointed out that commercial use of personal information collected and the revelation of privacy problems on Facebook are attributable to a decrease of happiness of Facebook users. People who revolt against the website’s privacy policy are conducting an anti-Facebook campaign at quitfacebookday.com and sickfacebook.com. Recently, other sites have appeared to attract those who feel a heavy burden from Facebook. One of them is Path, which limits the number of friends to 150 or less. Experts advise that in order to increase happiness and satisfaction through productive Facebook use, it is important to be active rather than passive. "Many people are not aware that they have editorial rights and the news feed is made by themselves," said Yoon Young-min, a professor at Hanyang University.