Few products of chance turn out to be as successful as Facebook had become over the years since its creation some 16 years ago.
The website, created in 2004, not only changed the life of its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, in the most significant way; it transformed the lives of the whole world.
Facebook connected the people, mostly friends, and family, but also helped form new relations. Many cases have been reported of marriages taking place through Facebook.
On one side, a lot of people have been able to find their soul mates, many others have also recovered the decades-old friends they had lost in the labyrinth of a busy life.
Pakistan was also among the countries severely affected by the addiction that Facebook has come to be known over the years.
Probably, the people of Pakistan indulged more deeply in Facebook, partly because they are more social than the people from other parts of the world, and partly because they have more time and leisure to be social.

Facebook and Pakistanis!

In many ways, Facebook has transformed the mode of thinking of the people. At least, as an observer, I can say this with more confidence about Pakistanis.
For instance, there is a worth-citing transformation that has wholly changed the concept of a traditional relation between parents and the child.
Earlier, too, boys would yearn for dating the girls, and they would also smoke on the street-corners. But most of these activities were considered a kind of taboo and meant to keep hidden from others, particularly from one’s own family.
But now perhaps the parents have become friendlier if Facebook has not euphemized those concepts.
Now, it is a matter of pride for teenagers to share their TikTok videos while hanging out with girlfriends or smoking a flavored cigarette. Interestingly, it is the parents who usually appreciate the child with the first like.
However, the problem has not been limited to children, the contagion seems to have spread far and wide.

Facebook, a tool for persecution!

For Pakistanis, Facebook has reduced into a tool mainly to serve as persecution. Even those who feel persecuted are no better than their persecutors.
The frequent check-ins to luxurious restaurants, the picture sharing of the half-eaten steaks with the friends, has become a national psyche. This national practice has perhaps been able to achieve its purpose.
The practice eventually helps to mortify the pride of those friends and family who are financially less blessed with the resources to depict this extravagance on social media.

But even when they are blessed with enough resources in the near future, the upstarts tend to repeat the practice they resented earlier.
Unfortunately, the majority of the posts on Facebook have condescended to become a message to someone. Sometimes, it is the venting the anger by an angry wife, or a husband, complaining about one or another domestic issue on the platform for everyone to see and guess.
Sometimes, it is aimed at arousing jealousy, while on the other times, it is passive aggression of a weak person, whose complaint of having wronged ends up as a Facebook post.

Why All the Saints are on Facebook?

Yet another aspect of Facebook is that it has rendered all Pakistanis destitute of good people in real life because all the saints are on Facebook.
Strangely, every single person on Facebook is found complaining of the injustice done to him/her by someone. We have formed a habit to blame everyone on social media, yet we ignore to realize that we are a part of the society we blame incessantly.
I know a majority of the people tend to share religious posts reiterating the benefits of offering prayers and doing all good deeds. Yet, I find very few of them actually practicing what they happen to preach untiringly on Facebook.
This article is not against using Facebook; in fact, the objective is to point out a social phenomenon, which I refrain from calling good or bad. It is up to the reader to decide whether or not this has become an inseparable part of our national attitude.
The question that we need to ask is that “if all the saints are on Facebook, where are the devils?”