Facebook aka Fakebook?

Written by Monika Prasad.

Monika Prasad is a communications professional with over eight years of experience in public relations and corporate communications. She started her career with a leading PR agency in Mumbai and has since worked in Dubai across oil and gas, media, and civil construction. She holds a Master's degree in Public Relations and Corporate Communications from the Xavier Institute of Communications.

Facebook aka Fakebook gets people depressed. What is Facebook for? It was created for harmless fun and to get connected with each other — but it has become more than that. It is viewed as a private space to share your life with like-minded people. Now we know that even if you have put your posts as private, they really are not private. And Mark Zuckerberg once said privacy was no longer a social norm. He is not wrong, because people are sharing — or rather oversharing — every single detail of their lives. Now, people tend to share — or rather highlight — the good parts, the fun parts of their lives. That can never be the whole life, but when friends and colleagues see only the happy parts, they start thinking that something is lacking in their own lives, causing sadness and depression. Jealousies are on the rise, and more people report turning to anti-anxiety medicines. That's what Facebook has done to many lives.

I recently took up a selfie challenge on Facebook. I don't usually do such posts, but since a close friend had nominated me, I thought of taking it up sportingly. I had to post ten selfies each day. I usually don't like posting my solo photos on Facebook, so I decided to post selfies with my beautiful friends that I have in Dubai. Posting a picture each day with the people close to me gave me a good feeling, but the entire game left me a bit sad too. Some of my friends started to make assumptions that my life is happy and rocking and that I was pretty content with my life.

It's been six months since I lost my job, and me being the kind of person that I am, I don't like staying at home. At times, I have got depressed thinking of when I will start work again. A friend recently told me — "oh I saw your post on FB lately, it seems you are enjoying being at home." I realized how misleading the Facebook/Fakebook posts could be. Yes, people see only the good parts; obviously they are not able to see what the other person is going through in real life. It is misleading.

Sometimes it can also be very time consuming to go through the pictures to choose the best one to upload; some even go a step further — editing the pictures so that they look best. How mundane and unnecessary could that be! I am a public relations and communications person by profession, and in my roles with different organizations I am paid to bring about a change in the way of communications in a corporate. Communications within a corporate have also changed over the past couple of years — social media has killed the small one-to-one discussion with your employees, colleagues, and seniors. For example — when an important announcement is to be made, the shift in the way of communications has been such that it is now announced on social media first (like Twitter, Facebook) and then your employees are informed. There was a time when I used to advise my clients that employees are your first customers: please inform them first about your latest products and innovations — and then the entire world. I am sad that corporates and clients no longer understand this. They think that posting everything on social media will help them reach their targets. I really wish I could change this perception. I sometimes wish I could go back to those days when there was no Facebook, WhatsApp, or Twitter. Face-to-face conversations, phone calling, writing emails were personal and socially satisfying. I wish I could persuade everyone around me that there's a real life waiting outside Facebook. Friends wanting to meet you, neighbors wanting to sip a coffee with you, your child wanting to play with you when you are back from work. We have to understand and take the lead in leading the 'real' life rather than the 'virtual' life on social media.

Sometimes we need to disconnect to connect.