Is Facebook making you sick?  Many have the false belief that Facebook was created for the benefit of people to stay in touch and see what their “friends” are up to.  In actuality, Facebook was created strictly to gather as much data as possible about its users for the single purpose of making a profit.

Is Facebook Having an Ill-Effect on your Health?

Is Facebook making you sick - nothing more than a “rat wheel” filled with advertisements, negative injections of news, agendas, depersonalization and a true money-making machine built on manipulating human psychology?

Is it having a negative effect on the health of our population at large?

Social isolation and lack of human contact is becoming more and more of a problem as technology brings us “closer together” without actually seeing or talking to people in person.

One of the things we know about human beings is that we require physical contact and face to face interaction with other humans in order to be healthy. When we isolate ourselves, a few things begin to happen:

* Immune system becomes less competent

* Reproductive hormones become imbalanced (especially women)

* Adrenal hormones become imbalanced

* Autonomic nervous system imbalances arise (sympathetic fight or flight dominance)

* Inflammation increases

Does Facebook Actually Decrease your Interactions with People?

I’ll be the first to admit that using Facebook has definitely decreased the amount of times I choose to pick up the phone and say hi to people to see what they are up to.  I already know what they are up to because I can just look on Facebook.

My Facebook feed is filled with pictures, videos and “updates” about people’s lives, so there is no need to take the effort to find out more intimately what my friends are up to.  Some people are addicted to Facebook and rightly so.  Many people make posts so they can get a “hit” of “likes” for each post or a reaction or response from people they know.

Studies show that checking texts, emails and “likes” are like little hits of the feel good neurotransmitter dopamine just like cocaine.  In fact, constantly checking notifications on our devices has been shown to lower your IQ!  Facebook has also been shown to activate areas of the brain that are related to addictive behaviors such as gambling.

Another issue that arises with Facebook during this political season is its use to spread political or religious agendas.  It’s always the same old “my side is better than yours” and this or that candidate sucks.  All the while, all these people making these posts assume that everyone who they are “friends” with agrees with them.

I have seen many, many heated debates on Facebook regarding religion and politics which actually do nothing positive or useful for anyone.  It’s much easier to have a debate hiding behind one’s keyboard than to have an intellectually honest conversation about such topics.

After reviewing many of these debates, it is clear that most people are arguing based on emotions rather than factual data and good evidence.

This approach to debating creates a stress response and possibly anger and frustration which wreaks havoc o...