UPDATED 08:19 EST / MARCH 07 2011

Facebook Hatebook. Is the Network Destroying Real-Life Relationships?

When we say that Facebook is our society’s mirror, it’s not always a sweet sight. Hard reality is also present. And the truth is, Mark Zuckerberg’s social network lives and breathes through both the positive (equivalent to harmonious friendship) and negative (word wars, sometimes real-life fights). While we have “friends,” we also come across “Facebook enemies.”  With online social persona crossing over reality, how capable or powerful Facebook is to demolish years of harmonious real-life relationships?

David Gewirtz of ZDNet shares an interesting study with quite ironic results: “…based on 446 respondents are in, 62% report that Facebook does indeed cause friends to fight. By contrast, only 20% report that Facebook does not cause friends to fight. Sadly, some of our readers definitely need to get out more, because 18% selected “Pity me for I have no friends.”

The consensus people have reached in the discussion is that Facebook does cause friends to fight sometimes. This not only marks Facebook as a true social mechanism, but that “fighting” is Facebook’s real point of unification. This union part is done jokingly–founder Mark Zuckerberg pushes Facebook as this site that lets everyone across the world come together and hold hands and sing songs.  But Facebook is really a magnifier of true human nature and their behavior. People fight, friends fight, so of course Facebook is a facilitator of “negative” human behavior as well.

How large can Facebook fight go? No one can precisely tell, with the social network’s growing presence around the globe, even encouraging Arab leaders to join. A recent report has shocked New York City when someone was killed after a Facebook brawl. In another study, Facebook is gradually dethroning money and intimacy as the two frontiers that cause divorces among couples in the United Sates.

One day, you feel like sharing something innocent and non-controversial in your wall. But, before you know it, your social graph is reacting and feeling bad over a guiltless post. You can relate huh? With the Facebook obsession, which is another broad debate, it seems that every little thing can spur emotions buried deep down in our human nature…somewhere.  Thanks, Facebook, for bringing out the best of us.


Since you’re here …

… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.