Feature: Facebook: A blessing or a curse for Vietnam's growing number of users?

The number of Vietnamese people using the world's largest social networking site is rising exponentially, but while the popular site allows users to interact with friends, celebrities and even politicians, the last few years has revealed a more sinister side to the site.

One evening, no different from any other, Quoc Dung's family gather in the dining room. Quoc Dung, 40, is an editor of a well- known online newspaper in Vietnam, and his wife Thu Nga, 35, works as an office clerk at an investment consulting company in Ho Chi Minh City.They have two children, a 13-year-old son named Quoc Phong and a 6-year-old daughter called Thu Van.

On the dining table, porcelain plates carry fried spring-rolls, a roasted chicken and Russian style salads are placed neatly around a bowl of sauce and a plate of spices. Van sticks out a chubby hand and briskly picks up a spring-roll with her chopsticks. But like lightning, her mother intercepts Van joyfully saying" Patience is a virtue."

Right after that, Nga raises her iPhone 5 and takes several photos of the dishes on the table and posts them on Facebook. Her husband smacks his lips"Many religious followers always say grace, thanking God for the food before a meal. We are non-believers, but always have to say grace, not thanking God, but thanking Facebook. Honey, how boastful you are,"Dung said, turning his smiling face to Nga who is accustomed to posting on Facebook photos of every meal before she eats.

After dinner, all the family members gather in their large sitting room. But instead of talking to each other like in the olden days,they glue their eyes to the screens of their smartphones or tablets. Dung silently edits articles, while Nga smilingly replies to comments of her food photos. Phong passionately plays"League of Legends,"a U.S.multiplayer online battle arena video game, which has been popular among Vietnamese youths for years and has the Vietnamese title"Lien minh huyen thoai."Meanwhile, Van holds the Internet TV's remote control, quickly browsing cartoons and funny clips on YouTube...

In mid-June, Facebook publicized astonishing results of a survey on Vietnamese users. Accordingly, Facebook has some 30 million active monthly users in Vietnam, or one-third of the country's population, of whom 27 million access the social network via their smartphones or tablets. Up to three-quarters of the users are in the age range of 18 to 34.

Facebook's survey showed that 20 million Vietnamese people use the social network on a daily basis, mostly to connect or chat with friends or visit pages run by companies and shops. On average, each Vietnamese Facebook user spends two and a half hours on Facebook a day,twice as much time he or she spends watching TV.

"Facebook helps us a lot. I interact with many reporters and readers at the same time very easily. My wife promotes and sells cupcakes on her Facebook page very efficiently in her spare time... But the social network does bring about trouble, too,"Dung said.

He lamented"The most recognizable thing is family members spend less and less time talking to each other. Each of us has a lot of friends in the virtual world, but we sometimes feel alone in real life, even right in our own family."

According to the editor, many Vietnamese families, whose members are addicted to Facebook, are no longer sweet homes, but boarding-houses, with members arriving home from work or school almost just to eat and sleep. "They sometimes show their affection to their loved ones just by sending icons or typing comments on Facebook pages,"he stated.

Instant messaging services and multiplayer online games provided on Facebook also help wives or husbands to conveniently make friends with strangers, eventually, in some cases, leading to adultery, even divorce. Ironically, it is the same Facebook pages that provide clues for those cheated on to find the cheaters. "Suspecting her husband of cheating, my close friend searched for his Facebook page. After filtering his online connections and relations, she created a shortlist of women who might be his mistress,"Hoang Vy, lecturer of the Hanoi University of Business and Technology, told Xinhua. "Finally, she spotted the prime suspect who always clicked the ' like' button under every line or photo he posted.After being interrogated, the husband confessed he had been having an affair with the woman,"she said.

Besides exposing adultery, Facebook has led to the arrest of Vietnamese criminals. In December 2014, police of central Da Nang city detained To Quoc Cuong, who had been hunted by them for four years, for nearly 90 robberies with the goods totaling nearly 1 billion Vietnamese dong(45,500 U.S. dollars) along with his accomplices.

Evading the police, Cuong went to Ho Chi Minh City and worked for a big restaurant where he fell in love with an employee there. Planning to get married, the couple had their photos taken and posted them on Facebook, which helped the police trace him.

Earlier, Da Nang police arrested Pham Ly Vien and handed him over to the police of central Quang Nam province who had sought to arrest him on the charge of deliberately injuring other people. Working as a painter at a resort under construction in Da Nang, Vien found the resort's view beautiful. Therefore, he used his phone to take a"selfie"then posted it on his Facebook page. Seeing the scenery in the photo, the police recognized the resort and quickly arrested Vien.

Some other Vietnamese Facebook users have been detained or fined for spreading harmful rumors, defaming celebrities or posting sex clips on their pages.

In June, a 15-year-old school girl from southern Dong Nai province drank pesticide to kill herself after her ex-boyfriend uploaded a clip on Facebook which showed the couple engaged in compromising acts. Some 15,000 people viewed the clip and many of them criticized the girl's lifestyle, which made her feel very ashamed.

A similar case happened in Hanoi in 2013, when a high-school graduate, who was going to attend a university, committed suicide after being mocked by her classmates. Earlier, two of her friends edited a photo which partially exposed her body.

Seeing the heart-breaking cases of Facebook-related suicides, well-known Vietnamese psychologist, Nguyen Hoang Khac Hieu at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy, made a photo essay named" Post-Facebook Love"to teach girls how to act when their boyfriends threaten to post sensitive clips or photos online. Right after the photo essay was posted on the young psychologist' s Facebook page, 2,500 people viewed it. "Sometimes, a meaningful photo on Facebook can change minds more easily than 1,000 lessons can. Sometimes, a profound status update on Facebook can change a student's viewpoint. Sometimes a moving story can change a person's life... The desired effect of sharing messages on Facebook is real and influential. But we must master it and not become its slave,"the eloquent psychologist told Xinhua.

Like many ordinary people, some Vietnamese senior officials and foreign diplomats in Vietnam have opened Facebook accounts and drawn a lot of attention. In February, Vietnamese Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien officially publicized her Facebook page to update healthcare news and gather public opinions, which has since received nearly 200,000"likes." Since U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius,established his Facebook fan-page more than half a year ago, it had received 15,400"likes." "Social networks in Vietnam will grow robustly in the coming years.Users are spending more and more time on social networks, so online business models, including sales, advertising, event organization and service providers, will develop strongly,"Nguyen Thi My Ngoc, senior PR executive of Vietnamese technology corporation VNG, owner of Zing Me,which used to be Vietnam's biggest social network, told Xinhua. Endi