Facebook entered our lives only a few short years ago, but it seems that it's become such an indelible part of our lives that we can barely remember life before it.
I remember the first time I was introduced to it by a friend of mine who already had an account. It started out as a fun, unprecedented way of checking up on your former school mates and eventually some newer ones.
As we scrolled through her facebook friends, I marvelled at the ones who seemed so successful so soon, was genuinely happy to check up on a few who I hadn't heard from for a few years, but was even more fascinated by the others whose lives and images seemed so different than what we came to know them as in high school.
In the beginning, facebook was special because it was both exclusive and connective. Only a select number of college email accounts were recognized for you to create your own facebook page. Then you could request to be a part of the lives of people who you used to see every day. These were people who were such a big part of your formative years, for better or worse.
Then somewhere along the way, the exclusivity vanished and I started recieving requests from people I didn't know. I used to only have to worry about whether I should remember you, now I had to worry about whether or not I ever met you...
...or if I should accept you because you're a friend of a friend of a friend
...or if I should accept you because the consequence of not accepting you would mean you hating me until the end of time, even though we didn't know each other that well and we could potentially be friends in the future. I know. So complex. (For the record, my facebook policy is: if I don't know you, you aren't my facebook friend.That's right-I had to create a policy.)
Then something that should've been predictable happened. Oversaturating myself with my connections became emotionally taxing. My curiousity became a curse. I wanted to hear what everyone was up to, but hearing what everyone was up to became a stressor.
Don't get me wrong, there are great qualities to facebook. There are friends and family who live in different cities and different parts of the world that I can keep in touch with. What's not to love about that? It was impossible to keep up with them before, unless you liked spending time on the phone or emailing. But anyone who knows me knows that I'm one of those people who doesn't like spending time on the phone. At all. And emailing seems too formal. I hate the generic emails in which I ask, "Hi! How are you? Tell me about yourself and what's happening in your life," over and over. It feels worse when you don't really have anything to reply.
Facebook allows us to stay connected to issues both domestic and foreign. I like hearing about issues my friends are passionate about, the ways they are affected first hand or the interesting reads they suggest. Facebook also gives us the opportunity to stay informally but emotionally connected, whether that's through the posted pictures, funny videos or songs we love.
But let's get real here. There's a lot of grandstanding. We've all been guilty of it to a certain extent. It feels like, at times, we can become self promoters with our own lives being the products. I'm not going to lie. It can be fun. But it can also be bad, because too much of anything is bad.
While we can usually quantify the effects of, say, over-eating through weight, it seems less obvious the effects of facebook. I can only describe some of the negative side effects as envy, stress, annoyance, ridicule, and anxiety.
Facebook has become sort of an addiction. Anyone regularly and willingly subjecting themselves to those negative side effects is either crazy or addicted. So the healthy solution is to scale back my facebooking.
Yesterday I decided to go on a facebook diet. I'm starting small: Seven days. But give me credit. In facebook time, seven days is like seven weeks. There will be so much up-to-the-minute information that I'll miss! But I believe it's for the best. I will not go on facebook.com. I will not open my aol notifications from facebook. (I've already started saving them in a folder to open and devour when I am officially off the diet.)
For seven days I'll attempt to document the phases of my withdrawal and its effect on my life. If I go into cold sweats or start vomiting- you'll know. If my body start twitching as I go through large amounts of pain, or experience hallucinations like demons being exorcised from my body- you'll know that too. I really hope those things don't happen, though. Wish me luck!
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