MEDIA ROOTS – You there.  Let’s talk Facebook.

Had I not deactivated my Facebook account just last week I would soon celebrate 26 years as a human, a full 7 of which FB would have been a part of.  More than one-quarter of my earthly life. 

In the beginning I held out as long as I could, until the pressure of being the only kid in college without an account eventually drilled through my defenses.  At first it was not all bad.  Heck, I used it to meet a girl at my school whom I otherwise would have never known, and we fell ridiculously in love.  Amazingly, disgustingly in love.  She eventually left me for another young stud and moved to the east coast.  Life! But I digress.

I quit Facebook.  If you’ve ever clicked the “deactivate account” button, the ensuing screen guilt-trips you with photos of your friends who “will miss you” if you leave.  Then you are instructed to explain why are pulling the plug and, if you make it THAT far, Facebook insinuates that you are weak of character by keeping your old email and password information warm for you, should you decide to come crawling back.  As if we can’t function without it.

I’m here to tell you that you life goes on.  Only after letting go do you realize your individual level of dependency.  One thing I’ve asked myself in my newfound post-FB world is ‘how did being a part of this for so many years make me a stronger, better person?’

Suppose I spent just 10 minutes a day on Facebook every single day for 7 years, or 2,555 days. This comes out to something like 425 hours.  425 hours is more than 17 full days.  17 full days spent on the computer posting photos, poking people, and sending messages.  

Did I make a difference in my community in those 17 days? No.  Did I make a new best friend? No.  Did I find out something that changed my life? No.  Did I learn a valuable new skill? No.  

So, why…?

Facebook is an escape to a land of safety and relative predictability but it doesn’t really matter because everybody looks good and sometimes they entertain you.  It’s reality TV with your Facebook friends as the actors.  I knew when I logged on I could expect Jen to post yet another video of her dog, Brian to rant about the Chargers and their losing ways, and Terrance to complain about college.  My friends played their parts with no major deviation from the script.  And it was this total absence of anything vaguely resembling the exchange of critical, analytical thinking that wore me down.    

The news feed makes the absolute vast majority of my friends appear one-dimensional, self-absorbed, and shallow.  My buddy Terrance is actually a deep thinker, but he doesn’t share that side of himself on Facebook (after all, what is the incentive?). Thus, I am deprived of the true essence of his person on a daily basis. I have surrounded myself with a world of make-believe and dehumanization by extending this behavioral phenomenon to the hundreds of my other intelligent, capable friends and acquaintances who post junk on the news feed. 

Look, if Facebook works for you, stick with it.  Maybe you know how to fully harness its potential to enrich your life. But do understand that you can never be 1,000,000% certain that your privacy is secure online.  And try spending as much time on Facebook as you do actually picking up the phone and calling the people you care about or, better yet, seeing them in person.  There will never be a substitution for the real experiences in life.                         
            
Writing by Jerry Miller

Photograph by Rick Pickett