Reader Soapbox: How I Freed Myself From Facebook
loading...
Soapbox contributor: Dani Draper
To write your own Reader Soapbox, visit our Reader Soapbox submission page.
The past few months I have come to realize the importance of dealing with people face-to-face. To help you understand how I came to this conclusion, I have to take you back eleven years.
When I was twelve, in middle school, I learned about the internet and signed online for the very first time. I became attached to this one particular site that flourished around a chat room based on a show that was playing on Cartoon Network at the time. I became addicted immediately. I neglected my school work, I got up early and stayed up late, and I avoided outings with my friends to type words to strangers around the world. I stayed glued to that site, and the other sites that took over the original one, for ten years. That puts us in 2008, about the time that my Facebook addiction started; out with one problem, in with another.
All of this makes me wonder how many other people have the same problem I do. I don’t regret the last 11 years; I have learned a lot, and have made many friends along the way. I have visited and am still in contact with a small handful of people that I met eleven years ago in that chat room. But as I have gotten older and have started my own life, I’ve learned how much of a problem hiding behind a monitor can be.
Today, I decided to delete my Facebook account for two main reasons. Over the past year, I have spent an unprecedented amount of time on this social networking site, but today I realized that Facebook is no different than those sites I was addicted to before. Although I didn’t avoid friends or stay up half the night to be on it, Facebook caused problems that have proven to be equally bad. Most people on Facebook use it for its convenience, and it can be just that if you use it right, but most people don’t. More often than not, people communicate on Facebook simply because it’s easier to write to them from behind a screen than to pick up a phone. I have a very good example with which to back this up, one I have witnessed first hand.
Friend 1 and Friend 2 knew each other a long time and lived in the same town, seeing each other often. Friend 1 moved away, and Friend 2 never once, even after a year, attempted to contact Friend 1. Friend 1 got upset, and complained to other friends. Other friends told Friend 2, but Friend 2 still didn’t contact Friend 1, even in the midst of a near-death in the family. Friend 2 signed up to Facebook a time later and found Friend 1. Friend 2 talked to Friend 1 a lot on Facebook, but not because Friend 2 cared about Friend 1. No, it is because Friend 2 was already on the computer often, and now found it convenient to talk to Friend 1.
People communicate on Facebook all the time, but how often does that communication go beyond the pages of the internet? Your friends watch your life through your status updates and photos, but how many of them really care to be a part of it? Very few. Sure, Facebook is a great tool to use in reconnecting with old friends, perhaps from high school, but how often are those reconnections fruitful? In my opinion, the only time Facebook is of any use in a case like this is on the rare occasion that reconnecting with an old friend results in meeting away from a keyboard. From now on, if someone wants to get in touch with me, they have to speak to me one way or another and actually produce conversation.
My other complaint about all the time I have spent on Facebook is the time I wasted. I played the farm and restaurant games constantly, and was always updating my “Home†page to see new updates. If I was away from the computer for a certain amount of time (whether it was 10 minutes or 2 days), I’d always scroll back through the feed to see everyone’s updates since I last signed in. Yes, I had a problem. But, think of all the things I could have been doing with my time! My husband and I opted against getting cable in our house after we got married so that we wouldn’t be tempted to slouch on the couch after work and watch Primetime television until sleepy time. Is there really a difference between flipping on the tube and flipping open my laptop? The answer is a big, resounding, “NO, DANI!â€
I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not suggesting that everyone close their Facebook accounts and quit the internet. This is my personal experience, and I learned that Facebook is not for me. It is a very valuable site if used correctly, and I’m sure it is the same for all the other social networking sites. I love writing, but haven’t written anything outside of a blog entry or school paper in years. I have had people begging me to write for or with them (including Steve here at the Spark), but haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. Deleting my Facebook account will free up time for me to write and be productive again. This time, once I quit, that’s all there is to it; this time, I will not be finding another site to latch onto.
Dani Draper is a Spartanburg-based writer and award-winning local blogger. To read more of her work, visit MidgetOnTheEdge.com.
Dani, this is amazing and pretty much sums up my feelings about Facebook entirely. People like it because it keeps you “connected”. Because you’re so easy to reach people do it, and you feel loved and needed.
But the true friends are the ones that find you without that easy access. Sometimes blog comments give me the same feeling. I feel like people will comment to keep “in the loop”, but how many of those people do you actually know?
Anyway, I loved this.
loading...
Funny, I was pointed to this piece via a FACEBOOK post!
I agree that many people are obsessed and/or addicted to FB and other social networks. However, I have really enjoyed becoming reconnected with family and friends spread literally across the globe and all for FREE! Ain’t this new fangled interweb thing a real humdinger?
After a death in my family, a part of my family I’ve had very little contact with in twenty years, I’ve been able to reconnect with my cousins and see their family photos and such. Are we all instant bosom buddies? No. But, one cousin in particular, who was also somewhat estranged from our clan for different reasons than I, and I struck up conversations and now communicate frequently and in a depth I have not shared with an extended family member in my whole adult life. We both feel more connected and more kinship than either of us have felt from our shared family in years. For that one relationship alone, Facebook has my eternal gratitude.
I bet I post more often than maybe I should, and like Dani I review my “wall” at frequent intervals. However, I block the farms and zoos and mafia and vampire etc apps some of my friends are gaga over. I like a little frivolous game play and down time like most folks, but I just can’t be bogged down by every sheep or silo or berry picking frenzy my pals so enjoy. Heck, I have a hard enough time remembering to water my REAL plants and animals, much less virtual ones!
I applaud Dani for recognizing her own weakness and making concrete steps to conquer them. We each should look inside and see what we spend our energies on and decide if they are fruitful.
Good luck with the writing, Dani. Perhaps I’ll be reading your first or fifth or tenth book soon!
loading...
I sure hope you’ll see some books eventually.
Thanks for the uplifting comments. I do know there are some great benefits to facebook, but with my addiction to the web, I guess I search for deeper relationships now. Things have to keep evolving for me to stay interesting since I’ve been dealing with people online for so long so those that I just have “stock” conversation with are kind of useless to me. I know that sounds terrible, and it’s hard to explain…I hope to be able to reactivate my page later, only it has to be when I’m knee deep in writing so that I already have something taking up my time and facebook will only be an afterthought.
PS: If anything, I’ve connected with some people more since deciding to deactivate…emails, phone calls, setting up plans with people. It’s great so far.
loading...
The reasons you don’t like Facebook are precicely why I like it. There are LOTS of people that, to be extremely honest, I just can’t make high enough of a priority to call and see them all that often, or don’t care to. And yet I still want to know if they’re doing well, or at least still alive. Facebook is the perfect way to stay in touch (and occasionally reconnect) with casual aquaintences and friends from high school while maintaining your schedule.
It’s kind of like sending out that Christmas letter to relatives you don’t talk to throughout the rest of the year. It’s not that you’re pretending to care about each other than you really do, but just so that you can let everyone know you’re alright or maybe even doing well and they can say, “Aw, that’s nice,” and seemingly forget about you again until next year.
Except I don’t send out those Christmas letters lol.
loading...
I like your Christmas card scenario. I do that with family, but most of the people on facebook that I’m friends with are people that I didn’t know that well in high school to begin with. On the other hand, a lot of them are people that I knew pretty well, but life has taken us different ways. That doesn’t bother me, I just feel like I was following their lives and getting upset that I wasn’t a part of it, when that was pretty much impossible since most have moved away or have crazy work schedules, or have kids now. I just decided for a while to focus on myself and start writing again. I want to look back and be proud of how I spent my time, and right now I can’t do that.
loading...
I enjoy Facebook, but there is too much on the site for me to get caught up in. I can go there for about 10 or fifteen minutes then I am done. I got the account mainly to stay connected with extended family, and have reconnected with some people I went to high school or college with. STILL it is the real life friends I interact most with on Facebook.
Well written Dani, now go write something else for us pronto.
loading...
Yes, ma’am!!
loading...
Great post Dani! I don’t use Facebook for much beyond keeping up with events going on around town and promoting my things on the Spark. It’s not really about anything beyond that for me, but I can certainly see how it could be more consuming than that for some people.
I spend a fair amount of time online, but most of that is reading articles and catching up on news stuff. My girlfriend is pretty good about making me unplug from everything on a regular enough basis to keep me on a pretty even keel I think. Still, I bet I could be better about it sometimes.
loading...
I still plan on spending a good bit of time online, but it will be for more productive things. You read articles and news and stuff, which is a learning experience. I want to spend more time writing in my blog and private journal, working on my photography (which involves observing other people’s photography), etc. With facebook out of the way, I’m kind of forced to do all that. I am loving it so far.
loading...
Well, I’m a little biased towards facebook because it’s how my boyfriend and I got together. We went to high school together, reconnect briefly on FB. I used FB to ask for help moving a fridge and he offered. The rest is history!
loading...
I remember that moving request! Sometimes we get more than we ask for, huh?
loading...
I think that’s really sweet.
I’ve reconnected with a few friends from high school on facebook, and have used it to build up existing relationships, I’m just trying to move those off of facebook now so I can build them up more. I’m already talking to several people on a regular basis outside of facebook since deciding to deactive. I love it!
loading...