Do you have Facebook Narcissistic Disorder?

According to current estimates about 400 million people and counting are now members of a social networking website such as Facebook or Myspace. In a sense, this constitutes the largest community in the world.

It’s easier to communicate with someone on Facebook than at your office or on a park bench at lunch. The people on Facebook don’t see or hear each other. They only get text messages from one another. This makes communication on Facebook much less personal, much more anonymous, and much less threatening.

The ease and anonymity of communication on social networks has given rise to what I call Facebook Narcissistic Disorder. People who have a lack of social skills or friends can go on Facebook and build up a list of hundreds or even thousands of friends. This list of friends on Facebook not only fills the gap of empty or nonexistent friendships in the real world, but also creates a number of illusions (or, perhaps, delusions).

One illusion is that people begin to think the friendships on Facebook are real. However, these online friends are different than real friendships. Online you can play roles. You can pretend to be a wise or nice person. Nobody can hear your voice or see your eyes or your body language, so it is easier to pull off a fake.

If you’re a person with frustrated social needs, you are more likely to believe the pretenders, whereas offline, you are less likely to do so. Hence, people begin to believe their own pretences; they begin to think that their social networks are real; and they begin to believe what people say to them, even outrageous thing.

The whole network atmosphere begins to take on an importance and an intensity that convinces a person that life on Facebook is actually more real than the real world. People spend hours on Facebook. They can’t wait to get on Facebook. They look for opportunities at work, at home, even while shopping or driving (using their iphones). Facebook becomes their life. Their long list of friends, their apparent involvement with these friends, the apparent caring attitude of these friends, the sense of belonging, all combine to provide a new feeling of well-being and hightened self confidence.

This is when Facebook Narcissistic Disorder can become full blown. People start to buy in to the Facebook world to the extent that they make poor and risky decisions. They set up dates with strangers and put far too much trust in them. They take tips from people they hardly know and invest in risky ventures (all their “friends” are doing it).

For some, Facebook becomes an addiction. They actually feel negative physical symptoms when they are not online.

One case I heard about recently involved a teen-aged girl who kept meeting men on line, only to have them borrow money and disappear. Each of these men would praise the woman, telling her she was the wisest, warmest, most beautiful girl he had ever met. This of course stoked her narcissism. After the girl was let down, she did not tell her parents, her real friends, or, God forbid, seek counseling. Instead, she went online and complained to her Facebook friends They were magnificently sympathetically. None of them bothered to question her in any way about her own complicity in the matter, as a real friend might do. Instead they trashed the man and told her she was perfectly fine.

Facebook may be the largest community of enablers in the world.