I don't 'face book'

By Park Moo-jong

"Thank God It's Friday" (TGIF). Today is the very day.

But in this ever evolving time of Information Technology (IT), the hitherto popular phrase does not necessarily mean the jubilant expression of the people.

Six years ago, I attended a dinner for the then visiting leader of a United Nations organization from Sierra Leon.

It was Friday evening. One of the topics at the table was TGIF, naturally, Thank God It's Friday.

The veteran African diplomat, however, shook his head meaning no. "TGIF" of today stands for Twitter, Google, Internet, Facebook," he said flatly, referring to the spreading social media or social networking services (SNS).

Social media, as everybody knows, are online platforms which people use to establish social networks or relations with others who share similar personal or career interests, hobbies, activities, school backgrounds or real-life connections.

In a metaphor, which is the greatest empire on the planet in the year of 2017? China has the largest with a population of 1.5 billion, while Russian has the largest amount of land. But the Internet empire, Facebook with 2 billion subscribers, is the answer.

This "empire" is visited by about 1.1 billion people worldwide who write something every day with replies by a similar number of netizens and around 300 million photographs uploaded.

Just 13 years after its birth, Facebook is expected to join the $500 billion club of aggregate market value after Apple, Google and Microsoft, nearly double that of Samsung.

It is not too much to say that social media is leading the global village with the number of people engaged with it, particularly those of the younger generation, using it from bed to bed. Indeed, social networking has a huge impact on how people communicate and interact but some refuse to get caught up in the trend.

Personally, I am not one of them "fortunately." Except for band and Kakao Talk exclusive for family, friends and fraternal groups like alumni associations, I have not yet used other SNS tools.

I do not twitter, though I twist from time to time, though the ardent twitterer Mr. Trump may be disappointed. I rarely "face book" these days in spite of having a smartphone and a laptop.

Too many people around me are spending too much time, almost addicted to typing on their laptops or mobile phones in search of stimulants and interesting stories posted on social media.

With no subscription to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, I can obtain enough information and knowledge I may need for my ordinary daily living through both online and offline newspapers _ sometimes more than enough.

I don't like the risk of my personal information getting into the hands of third parties I do not know. Social networking offers easy ways to meet people I don't know, keeping them at a distance. This may be good for some people. But I prefer meeting face-to-face and talking over the phone.

Behind the convenience and information social media offers, however, are the growing ill effects that are unfortunately emerging to be a serious social nuisance as expected in various parts of life, disgracing their many merits.

So many people have had hard times due to their online gaffes such as those embarrassing statements they made about specific persons like their employees or employers that can be found with a simple web search.

The increasing cyberspace witch hunts through fake or unverified postings have emerged to be other serious social evils, particularly in this country, with world top-class fast internet access and almost perfect Wi-Fi coverage for smartphones and computers.

The recent "Bus 240 Incident" in Seoul is a mere sample of online witch hunts. As reported by all media outlets, a 60-year-old driver with a career of 33 years of driving the Seoul intra-bus numbered 240, became a victim of an anonymous woman's post on a social media that he ignored her crying plea to stop the bus to find her daughter, who got off alone at the previous stop. He kept driving to the next stop, she reported.

The post went viral instantly on local portal websites and caused serious public outrage. Fanning the flames, newspapers and TV stations were all out to cover it. However, the police investigation and CCTV footage found the story was not true and the anonymous writer, known to be a female passenger of the bus, posted an apology the next day, saying she was sorry for writing the inaccurate post.

But the damage was already done. The driver said that he was even thinking of suicide. The latest Busan middle school girls' posting of photos of a 14-year-old bloodied girl, the victim of a merciless assault, is also a social evil, the product of the current SNS era.

As The Korea Times editorial on Sept. 2 pointed out, it is immoral and a crime for "cowardly" people to post fake or unverified stories aimed at insulting, blaming or slandering specific "innocent" persons they don't even know.

Online anonymity allows them to do so. As in financial transactions, the compulsory use of real names is necessary for posting on social media.

SNS addiction is like being addicted to narcotics. Social networking deprives us of too much time. This is the reason why I do not do social networking and I feel no inconvenience at all.

Park Moo-jong is a senior adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of Korea's first English newspaper founded in 1950 from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter for the daily from 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or emjei29@gmail.com.