Facebook: a social tool or a psychiatric help?

It has been almost a year now that I've opened my facebook account and I can honestly say that so far I've been happy with it. I have discovered friends that I thought I lost for ever and I have made lots of new ones that I thought I'd never find. However, while browsing through some of the applications, I came face to face with the "cruel" reality hidden behind the apps! Perfectly normal homo sapiens sapiens were trying to find the other half that's been missing from their lives and what's even more scary..perfectly normal homo sapiens sapiens found a way out for their vices and their sexual preferences.
The things one can discover are difficult to be described..photos of naked bodies (completely naked, I might add), photos of male bodies dressed in woman's clothes, comments that could make even the "coolest" person blush and most important...these are all available to everyone,even teenagers of 14 and 15 years old. There is no age limit to facebook users. As long as you have an e-mail account and you are willing to provide some info of yourself, you can attain a facebook account and browse through all its applications.
I do realise that anonymity provides great power and freedom to express yourself sexually, mentally etc but it should also be done with great caution. We are not talking about a harmless flirt, which -let's face it- can be liberating and self-reassuring for most of us. We are talking about vulgar comments and even more vulgar pictures. I came across a photo of a male body mollesting one "specific" body part, dressed as a prostitute in leather declaring itself as a bisexual and provoking people to comment on that. Nobody had the guts to report abuse of this application so this picture continues to travel happily across the net!!!!!! In the next photo there was a 15-year-old boy that was looking for some love and a special someone to talk to. If this is not madness, then what is?
Isn't there any control or sense of descency on behalf of the creators?
The funny thing is that there are people who are kind and social, with a great sense of humour and a large amount of class and elegance. They write nice things, say "please" and "thank you" and behave impecably! They never are offensive and some of them do try to find a mate for a week or for a year or forever -duration doesn't really matter-in the most honest way.
So far, facebook has been a surprise for me. I have found friends and family members that I haven't seen or talked to for years! I have spent my boring free time playing games and taking tests that were hilarious and truly enjoyable. I have shared pictures with my friends, supported openly several causes such as "Doctors without borders" and everyday I have been given the chance to send my personal message out to the rest of the world. I guess I could say that in a way it's been a kind of psychotherapy for me,too. In an international society which spread us to the four corners of the earth and during an economic crisis that a simple phone call could cost more than an Armani outfit, facebook has been a relief. It generated the feeling that no matter where we are, we stayed connected to each other somehow. We never lost touch, just a few hours of sleep!
Nevertheless, there is the "other" side of this net phenomenon, the "dark" one. Like the flow of the capital throughout our liberal economy market, it is uncontrollable and doomed to collapse. (Oh God, I'm addicted I hope not!) There will be one day one furious parent discovering his/her son's/daughter's secret,naughty life and the persecution will begin. The parent, of course, will never blame his/herself and will be more than happy to find a scape goat. Alas! All will be lost,then....
In fact the question we really need to answer is "What leads people to such a behaviour when networking?What do they have to gain?" The anser could be more simple than you can imagine.
LONELYNESS!
Why was facebook so successful in the first place? Because people have gained the world and they lost each other. Because there is no communication beyond internet. We work 12 hours a day, we worry about our salaries 5 hours a day, we focus on our career 6 hours a day and we drown in this routine deeper and deeper as time goes by. These filthy photos are nothing more than a mere desperate cry for attention and compassion. Since the 20-minute-satisfaction is all that we have been left with to remind us of our humanity, we use it in order to cry for help, in order to validate our existence. Aristotle defined humanity as a state of being through communication, through interaction with each other and this is what modern societies are depriving us of. The funny thing is...we don't have the money to pay for a shrink to tell us what's missing! We have created shrinks and we are unable to use them! The next best thing and far cheaper is internet. I set facebook as an example but there are other cyberspaces where people can turn to. Still the message that we should get is the same. There is an overflow of lonelyness in our well-oiled society machine. We can choose to ignore it until we find ourselves non-human or we can turn to the other alive 3dimensional people next to us and try to cope with them in our real lives.
I used to be proud as a Greek for a lot of reasons and one in particular we have never needed shrinks or psychiatrists because we had friends and therapy included a bottle of wine/ouzo/tsipouro/retsina and a friendly shoulder to cry on. Now,with a dash of disappointment, I see that even the Greeks started taking the path of lonelyness, the path of friendless life. The good news is that we do hold on better than the others but we are about to go down any year now.
Let's go out people and enjoy our cities, our lives, our friends...!!!!!! Life is too short to be consumed in front of a screen!
Thank you for reading me and sorry if I have offended you. It was intentional! ;-)