Abstract:
The study reveals some of the negative impacts of Facebook social media for youths and their
social life. This study has achieved three main objectives; (1) to identify the correlation between
Facebook social media and, suicides, abuses, rapes and other crimes among youths in Sri Lanka;
(2) to examine the real impact of Facebook for the crimes and abuses; (3) to suggest possible
solution to minimize negative impacts of Facebook social media.
Facebook is the most popular social networking website in the world. Social networking
websites are specialized websites where people meet other people online and interact. They
interact mostly in terms of sharing photos, videos and information about their day to day
activities. The current Facebook statistics shows that the service has been used by more than 300
million users around the globe and 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day. Even in Sri
Lanka Facebook is the most popular social media. Unfortunately, according to the media reports,
the Facebook is becoming a major reason for suicides, sexual abuses and other crimes in Sri
Lanka. Therefore, some of community organizations and people requests to ban the Facebook in
Sri Lanka. On the other side, some of intellectuals argue that there is no close relationship
between these crimes and Facebook.
The study is based on 06 most popularized cases which were happened in 2014 and 2015 in Sri
Lanka. The both public and private media has reported that the major cause of these 06 cases is
Facebook related incidents. The study has clearly pointed out that there is very law relationship
between the cases and the Facebook. Final argument of the research is no significant negative
impact between these two variables
