Facebook is Popular, So When Can We Start Banning It?

Wednesday, 23rd June 2010

For those of you not watching the football (England 1-0 up at the moment, incidentally, and so just one blunder from being plunged back into the slough of despond) consider this question, asked by the Irish Labour MEP Nessa Childers:

There has been an explosion in the usage of this online social networking tool across Europe: unfortunately many people have crossed the line from social networking to social dysfunction. This is a real health issue and I am calling upon the Commission to take action.

Visiting your Facebook page frequently actually causes what psychologists refer to as ‘intermittent reinforcement’. Notifications, messages and invitations reward you with an unpredictable high, much like gambling. That anticipation can get dangerously addictive. Many people access their Facebook page once or twice a week; however, for others it has turned into a compulsion — and it is a compulsion to dissociate yourself from your real world and go and live in the Facebook world.

Moderate usage is not a problem at all for most people, however some people do not seem to realise that it is not real life.

With the passing into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU now has increased powers to legislate when there is a threat to public health in Europe. Will the Commission submit proposals to Parliament to address this growing threat to the mental health of European citizens?

Yes, this is the European Parliament but let no-one believe that this kind of ninnyishness is confined to Strasbourg. You can find plenty of it at Westminster, Holyrood or the United States Congress too. More's the pity.

My thanks to Slugger O'Toole for digging this up.

Filed under: Europe (748 more articles) , Internet (90 more articles) , O Tempora, O Mores (186 more articles)

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THX1138

June 23rd, 2010 6:05pm Report this comment

And that's not the worst of it, according to The Mail, Facebook gives you VD.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260230/Facebook-sex-encounters-linked-rise-syphilis.html

Edmund Jerk

June 23rd, 2010 6:36pm Report this comment

Politicians everywhere may love banning things but the politicians at the European Union is especially keen on banning things. Who needs the nanny-state when you've got a nanny-empire?

David Booth

June 23rd, 2010 9:59pm Report this comment

This is the same interfering tendency that leads to the Dangerous Dogs Act, the banning of all hand guns and calls for zero levels of alcohol in motorist blood.
Simply because some madmen goes out with vicious dogs, or on a shooting spree or gets completely drunk and kills other we are all condemned by the "Something must be done brigade"
Remember for every complicated problem there is a simple solution that is invariably wrong.

Beer Moth

June 23rd, 2010 10:41pm Report this comment

Banning Facebook is clearly the act of morons.

We should let immature dickheads spend as much time as they like flouncing up to its fullest extent, what is in fact a sad little existence. So that other equally sad tossers can compare with what is not happening in their own lives.

'Favourite food: pie and chips. Favourite pastime: getting wrecked'

Get tae fock.

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