I’m a Facebook junkie, and I know I’m not the only one that has to check it every hour of the day. Almost every student can say they have become a victim of Facebook.

I did some research on some statistics to see how much time people spend on Facebook, how many people are active members and how often people check their page during the day.

There are 47 million active users on Facebook. According to the Web site, since January 2007, 200,000 new member registrations have occurred, which is an average of a 3 percent growth. Because of the expanded registration Facebook added in September 2006, active users have doubled.

I contacted some people on my friends list to find out their personal Facebook statistics. The average number of times my friends checked their page was two to four times a day. The lowest number of times logging in was once a week and the most was 20 times a day. The average number of friends on Facebook fell between 100 and 350. The least amount of friends was 30, and the most was 1,134 (and yes, they know everyone on their friends list). The time spent on Facebook was anywhere between a couple of seconds to a half an hour. Most responses for how long they owned the account varied from a few months to two-and-a-half years, and most joined when the school was offered as a network.

So does this mean Facebook is addicting? I hate to say yes, but statistics don’t lie. Facebook is one of the 10 most-trafficked sites on the Internet, ranking number eight on the 2006 poll done by Compete Web site. Number one on the list was the ever-so-popular MySpace.

The question still remains as to why this Facebook phenomenon has taken over the lives of students. Facebook’s appeal stems from what it provides for its members. It allows members to communicate, share photos and meet new people. On average, according to the Web site, people spend 20 minutes a day on their page checking their messages and their photos. That’s 20 minutes that we could be doing
homework, getting fresh air or making money at work.

Facebook has become just another way for us to procrastinate. We log on to write a paper that’s due, but first we check our Facebook. One thing leads to another, and you’re on for 20 minutes when you could have been writing the introduction to the paper.

Let’s face it, as a society and the next generation, we would rather sit on Facebook than get started on homework. Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook as much as the next person, but I hate the fact that it eats away the social interaction we get from talking to a person face-to-face.

The lack of face-to-face interaction and the fact that we procrastinate are ways that Facebook can ruin our lives. Yes, ruin; it ruins the fact that we could have finished homework 20 minutes earlier, it ruins the breath of fresh air, it ruins the extra money you could have gotten from work and it enforces the fact that we are becoming too damn lazy.