why I left facebook:

Ok, so many people have been asking me why I decided to leave facebook—and a few of you have been lucky enough to hear this rant in person ;) For the rest, here is a very detailed and very jumbled description of the reasons I [finally] severed ties…and some other miscellaneous thoughts on the issue.

put most simply, I’m BEING the change I wish to see. Very Ghandi, I know, but it’s the truth. I know that I can’t change everyone’s behavior, but I can change my own. to use another coined phrase, I’m leading by example! haha. I know that I’m in a minority of people who aren’t on facebook, but I KNOW that I’m in good company-with people who I really respect and value in my life not having been on facebook for quite some time and still being good friends and functional members of society, and I think it’s a growing minority. its at least grown by one!

The most important and underlying point is that I am sacrificing the many for the few. To be more specific-I’m reclaiming the real relationships in my life and getting rid of everyone on the sides.

Allow me to explain.

Facebook lets us connect with many people, yes. But I would argue that these aren’t really connections. They’re more of COLLECTIONS. I am not really friends (in the traditional sense) with all of my ‘friends’ on facebook. I don’t know much, or sometimes really anything about them, and facebook ENABLES this ‘collecting’ to happen.

again, let me explain.

being ‘friends’ with someone on facebook takes about one click’s worth of effort. You don’t need to get to know them, you don’t need to know and remember ANYTHING about them because anything you need to know (birthday, shows/music they like, etc.) is all right there on their profile. How convenient. You know both everything and nothing about them. You have all this information in the virtual world, but never having asked them a single question about themselves or had a single conversation with them. I think it would be interesting to ask people who their friends are in real life, and then look at their list of facebook friends. How well do you really know all of these people!? do you even know them at all?! [for some kids these days]—have you EVER met them in real life? and what is the appeal of having a zillion facebook friends? To show other people how many people you know? What does that matter, if you don’t really know them at all!? I think it’s better to have fewer good friends than many distant acquaintances…and it’s time for my actions to start reflecting that.

next, the generation gap.

I love the way my generation (really, I guess, my general age group) uses facebook: the occasional wall post saying ‘I thought of you when x, y, or z happened’, a funny quote/picture/video/website, appropriate pictures, etc. and the witty status updates. I have absolutely no problem with all of that and, in fact, I will REALLY miss all of the cool things that people post on their walls and I get to see in my news feed. I hoooope to get my fill via blogs, actual conversation, and email.

My concerns on facebook are with kids/today’s teenagers and adults.

I’ll start with kids. You know who they are: most kids currently in high school and the early years of college. I am absolutely completely appalled by the way facebook is used by this group. Nobody communicates face to face, soooo much drama happens because people type things they would never say in person, and I really think that interpersonal relationships suffer as a result. I would absolutely have about ten more free hours in my week if not for the roommate conflicts I’ve seen because of facebook. OH MY GOODNESS people not in student affairs-you would not even BELIEVE it. I think part of the problem is that facebook walls are interchangeable with facebook chat and used for conversations, arguments, and the like. There are few things more annoying than other people getting into a nonverbal altercation on MY facebook wall—why is my own personal page being used for something I’m not even a part of!? I tell my sister all the time that my wall is a place for positive things, not for ‘why the hell don’t you call me!?’. That’s material for a message, or an ‘inbox’, as they call it these days (don’t even get me started on that.). But, I rest my case, it’s all the same to a teenage kid.

Also, people my age grew up knowing the dangers of the online world. Kids today are fearless online. Mannnny things they post on facebook SHOULD NOT be posted publicly, for the love of goodness! Kids today have no concept of internet appropriateness, and they have no filter when using facebook. its APPALLING.

On another note, I want to touch here on the reason I don’t like being friends with my RAs or other students on facebook—it’s because to many (not all, but MANY) of them, there is no difference between modes of communication. I absolutely 100% do not want people posting on my facebook wall “my weekly report will be a few minutes late” or something to that extent-anything about work-because facebook for me was a fun place for friendly things. Not for business things and reminders, etc. I can easily see my facebook wall sliding down that slippery slope and I’d rather just not deal with it altogether than risk it with the few who don’t understand that personal boundary for me. There is absolutely nothing on my facebook that I wouldn’t be ok with anyone seeing, it’s more an issue of what facebook could easily become from a work standpoint.

ok, now for adults. and don’t get me wrong, I completely see the appeal of reconnecting (…but is it reconnecting? or re-collecting? hahaha…) with people from the past when its been years and years. I can totally get behind that and could see myself engaging in such activity however many years down the road. However, again, it’s the few people who ruin it!

Adults with kids. First let me say that I completely understand posting pictures of your kids and in fact, I love seeing pictures of people I know who have little kids. So post on, and please email me pictures occasionally because I will miss them! and let me also remind you of the wonders of photo share sites like my personal favorite,  www.shutterfly.com. As exhibit A, you can check out my share site at http://sarahspictures914.shutterfly.com/! ANYWAYS, my concern is when adults are sooooo active on facebook—posting about their kids, commenting on people’s posts, constant status updates, etc. I’m just not sure I exactly understand the point of that…when you have such a full life of your own…and ESPECIALLY when people talk about how busy they are and how they don’t have time for this, that, or the other thing. Many of you know I am a firm believer that *you have time for what you make time for*. Are you really too busy? Or are you spending too much time on facebook? What’s really important?! I think your actions should reflect your values. If one of your values is to maintain distant connections with many people, then great! I am happy for you because facebook provides the perfect outlet for that—yay! But, again, I don’t completely understand the point. People aren’t going to just forget about you if you don’t come up on their news feed…and if they do, are they really worth keeping in any kind of touch with!? Even if you have a lot of distant friends/connections/collections, how many of them do you really know much about or know much about you? Is it really worth it? I also heard a quote that *‘the people who want to be in your life will find a way to stay there’*, and on a similar note *‘don’t worry about the people from your past-there’s a reason they didn’t make it to your future’*. I’m going to hope that those speak for themselves in the context of this paragraph…but is your life really going to be that much better now that you can follow everyone you once knew? You didn’t keep in touch with them from way back when, so why now? Yes, I completely understand that time works wonders and you can always reconnect with people from your past, friendships happen in waves, etc. I get that-as much as a 24 year old person could get that- and I do see the benefit of facebook for that. BUT, like with picture share sites, I think there are other ways to accomplish that without all the drama and false sense of connection that comes with facebook.

Ok, my next point is for all age demographics: YOU are not your facebook wall.

I sometimes even needed to remind myself of this when I would look at my wall and be disappointed if nobody posted anything. Or, in typical Sarah fashion, I would start feeling jealous/left out when people would post on this or that person’s wall but not mine. Why not me!?—hence why I left AIM so many years ago. haha and what do you know-I essentially have never looked back and do not miss it at all.

Anyways, so I started thinking—WHY do I feel bored or blah when nobody has posted anything new on my wall?! This is NOT A REAL WORLD. This is a virtual world that has almost no consistency with real life. I want to live in REAL LIFE!! With real people and real relationships and real interactions that actually mean something! I didn’t like how my mood and my excitement was so tied to my facebook wall.

Ok, as I’m thinking about this, I thought about something else…and this might get kind of deep, so try to stay with me. Some people might argue that the virtual world IS a real world and that those things are real and mean something and that it’s always exciting when people post on your wall-so why sacrifice those good feelings at the expense of all the times that you have no posts or updates. Ok, I could see that. BUT. A real world should be one that you exist in all of the time…not one that you check into and out of. That’s the difference for me. Facebook and the online world isn’t on that level of REAL because you aren’t always in it…you have to log on, log into facebook, all the while living in your real world and using real world time to be in this virtual world! ahh!

On a similar and less existential note, someone much younger than me once asked me: ‘will you comment on my facebook pictures? pleeeease?’, to which I responded: ‘what, and say how hot you look just like everyone else says?’, and she said : ‘yea!’. no. that is so depressing. you should NOT be determining your own self worth and self esteem by people’s comments on facebook! omg! there are just so many things wrong with that I don’t even know what else to say, except to give another example. Another person once said to me: ‘this will be a great profile picture, I wonder how many likes I’ll get!’. again, depressing and sad.

Another big pull for me to leave facebook is, again, the relationships I have on and off of it. Two of my closest friends are not on facebook and, SHOCK, I still consider them to be great friends. We still keep in touch, I’ve visited them both this year, and we keep in touch quite frequently. We email, write real letters, and—gasp—talk on the phone. This feels much more real and fulfilling to me than posting something on their facebook wall or reading their news feed updates. **hold this thought!!**. As for my real friends who are actually on facebook, I don’t really interact with them much on there…but yet, they are some of my closest friends. So what does this all MEAN!? I guess that facebook is good for those people who are kind of in the middle-the ones you want to stay ‘friends’ with but without the commitment of calling them or remembering their birthday **hold this thought as well**. You know who they are-you read their updates on your news feed and maybe exchange a couple of wall posts every so often. I do understand facebook’s legitimacy for those kind of relationships and yes I am a littttle worried about keeping in touch with all of those people. But, again, I think the people who are worth having in my life will be in it one way or another. At least I hope that our friendship is bigger than facebook.

Alright, back to a point from above: the news feed. The passive way to get information. I think it’ kind of weird that most of what we know about people we get from their news feeds-information that is meant for both everyone and no one at the same time. It’s meant for everyone to see, but for no one in particular to see. Again, IMPERSONAL. This point was further emphasized to me when I was talking to a friend about this…she said that when she gets together with friends from home, she already knows most of the things they say they’ve done throughout the year and seen some pictures. So, you get all this information just passively without any interaction with the actual person and then when you actually are together you have like nothing to talk about! What is that!?!?! Isn’t it ironic!?

Ok…BIRTHDAYS. I want to ask you-how many people’s birthdays do you genuinely know right now, without looking at facebook? For me it’s my immediate family, and probably about ten good friends from various points in my life-and even then, it’s usually not the exact date but a general time frame. I know maybe 5 exact birth dates. BUT ANYWAYS, the point is that I don’t really know anyone else’s birthday. I just relied on the facebook reminders so that I could make the effort of clicking on their name and typing a short wall-worthy message that everyone would see. IMPERSONAL. Yes, when September (14^th!) rolls around, I will really miss the wall posts from random people of my past-those are always fun. But it’s a FLEETING fun. It’s pleasure versus happiness, as I learned about in Positive Psychology. It’s nice to get the post, but it’s never followed by any real conversation and we all know that it never will be. Those people aren’t going to call you, or even message you, or even facebook chat message you. It’s basically that person saying ‘oh, your name came up when I logged in on my homepage, and I remembered who you were and you were worth the click’. Worth the click. That’s really nice. I want people in my life who I’m worth the card for. People who will look up my address, (people who actually HAVE my address in the first place!), buy the stamp, and write me a personalized message in a card. I LOVE cards. They mean SO much to me! …also it’s really sad when the people who would probably send you a card can just revert to your facebook wall. I think it’s a shame. For me personally, I would rather get like even three or four cards from people who think I’m worth it than get 100 wall posts from people I haven’t heard from since ‘happy birthday’ on my birthday last year and who don’t even know where I’m living or what I’m doing in my life now.

Also on the note of birthdays, I was going through my facebook ‘friends’ and writing down the birthdays of my actual friends when I noticed something. I know I said this above, but I really don’t know anyone’s birthday! its so weird! facebook really enables you to not have to remember birthdays…because they’ll just come up on the homepage! I know it sounds silly, but I already felt closer to people just knowing their birthday! for real!

ok, one other thing I can’t stand about facebook. pictures. don’t get me wrong, I LOVE seeing about 90% of the pictures people put on facebook and I will really miss many of them. I would like to again remind everyone about the glory of photo share sites! but anyways, how many times have you asked someone for their pictures and they say ‘oh yeah, I’ll put them on facebook!’. well, that’s excellent. I can look at them and…that’s it. I can’t get them full size and can’t order them…its so…VIRTUAL world only! what the heck!?!? I guess its just because people don’t really have hard copies of pictures like they used to…but I DO. I print all of my pictures because I have firsthand experience of the dangers or relying on computer storage. pictures on facebook are COMPLETELY useless except for looking at them.

onnnneeee last thing, I promise. I can’t not include this. I know that not everyone uses it, but…’checking in’ to places. what is the point!? if im with someone somewhere…1) I don’t need evvveryone to know-because why do they need to know!? what is the purpose!? and 2) you are taking away from the face to face social interaction by using your phone to check us all in to wherever we are. everytime a phone comes out during socializing time, it takes you AWAY from that interaction and INTO you interacting with your electronic. which is a different issue altogether, but completely relates to the point of checking in. interact with me here and now! telling the rest of the virtual world that we are at that location doesn’t matter! maybe to signify that we’re spending time together? but are we, really, if you’re on your phone? hmmmmmm.

ok, well, there you have it…my complete thoughts on the evils of facebook. ive been off it for 2 days now, and im going through a BIT of withdrawal…everytime I sit down at my computer I want to just check it quick…but I cant…haha. but I hope itll get better. instead, I will call my friends in real life!