Do you know what ‘F’ means? Not as in ‘f-all’ or ‘f-off’, bust just a single, solitary F.

Its the Facebook sign. When you sign in, that’s the first thing you see. F. And it controls lives.

They’ve now shown that the little ‘F’ instantly stimulates the same areas of the brain that respond to addictions. Crystal meth, alcohol, crack cocaine, Facebook. And this wonderful ‘joining together of the whole world into a lovely cohesive network family’ is in fact more cynical, more destructive and, as you can see walking down any London street, totally dominating lives.

The Facebook dudes realised early on that we’re all, to a greater or lesser extent, rather needy. We need love, we need to be involved, we need affirmation of our lives. And that’s what Facebook does. And it does it instantly. Feeling low? Just put up a photo of your nob and get 27 ‘likes’ in 3 minutes. Then you feel better again.

But then the pressures start. Kids feel they have to keep posting stuff. And good stuff. Otherwise they don’t get the ‘likes’ and that makes them feel worse than if they hadn’t bothered. Like any addiction, like gambling, the thrill that you may win outweighs the possibility that you may crash and burn. This creates massive social (media) pressure on the kids, who are always more susceptible, more vulnerable to crises of confidence.

I only started using Facebook about a year ago. I’ve nominally been a ‘member’? or whatever, a ‘face’ maybe, for years but never touched it. I use it really, and this will really surprise you, to put pictures of Lila up there so my overseas mates can get a fix. (796 ‘likes’, 492 ‘loves’ and three emoticons that I have no idea what they mean). But once I go on I feel I have to ‘take a look’. Because I need to see all the vegan recipes, as I’m eating my lunchtime salt-beef and foie gras sandwich. Because I need to know that Kevin has just ‘checked in’ to McDonalds in Baker Street. That someone has found a potato that looks exactly like Boris Johnson but is actually cleverer. And I need to see the comments.

People always feel obliged to ‘oooh’ and ‘aaahh’ and ‘oh, that’s lovely’ and ‘gosh you look gorgeous!!’, lots of gushing and enthusiasm and encouragement. Which in fact merely encourages the recipient to repeat. The addictive cycle.

So if you post something on Facebook and I comment ‘tosser!’ or ‘loser!’ or ‘your bum looks fucking humungous in that’, I’m actually being nice, doing you a favour and trying to help you with your addiction. I’m like a social (media) worker. Which is probably why I now have a whopping 17 ‘friends’.

God help our children.

Happy Friday

A xxxx