Is the social networking site Facebook set to bankrupt the already hemorrhaging American economy? 

Forget about pick-pocketing legislators and healthcare reform for five minutes and consider these tidbits of info:

Estimates of the number of US workers who go online from work—not including people who worked from home or checked e-mail via mobile phones—range between 65 million and 68 million, making the average 66.5 mil. And according to one survey, at least 60% of Internet use at the office was not work related.

Suppose half this workforce spends time on the clock uploading lampshade antics from the weekend or sending flair to their college roommate, at $20 an hour, five days a week that is $3,325,000,000 in productivity dollars lost PER WEEK.

According to Facebook, the social networking site currently boasts over 200 million users and/or abusers worldwide. Twenty five million plus-cheeseburger eating, Starbucks-sipping Americans dominate that slice of the statistical pie chart, with that number increasingly daily.

And despite the privacy that cubicle affords you, Big Brother may not care that you went home and played Mafia Wars for an hour and fed the kids Fiddle Faddle – again – but he does care if you did it on his dime. Seventy-seven percent of business managers polled said that they utilize Internet usage monitoring software in the workplace.

Additionally, psychological studies show that prolonged Internet usage can lead to depression and anti-social behavior. 

So, is finding out what your cousin in Peoria had for dinner on his culinary tour of the Ozarks worth time, money, your job and the state of your mental health, not to mention meaningful face time with friends and family?