I deleted my Facebook account. Well, actually, i deactivated it. Let me say, if you don't think Facebook is a monster that's out to consume you, try deactivating your account. First, good luck figuring out where to go to deactivate it. Then, once you do click to deactivate it, Facebook makes you type in your password, then makes you type those funny looking squiggly letters in the box, then asks you a couple times if you're sure you want to leave, then asks you to select a reason for why you want to leave, then tells you they're very sorry to see you go, but if you want to come back, you just have to log in like normal. Well, they might make quitting unnecessarily hard, but at least it's incredibly easy to relapse.
Why did i delete Facebook? Well lots of reasons, some of which might apply only to me, but others of which i believe are more universal.
First of all, Facebook had become a habit for me. Every evening i would be scrolling my news feed, looking for interesting news from my friends from home. I was beginning to depend on Facebook to feel connected. Without Facebook i didn't feel my friends had a significant presence in my life.
Secondly, Facebook is a total letdown when it comes to relating personally with others. Seeing pictures of my friend's lunch or new car or reading my friends yell - i mean, write in all capital letters in 160ish characters or less - past each other about why Invisible Children is the best/worst thing ever today frustrates my desire for real communication. In other words, while i depended on Facebook to maintain my friends' presence in my life, whatever presence Facebook allowed was illusory and unsatisfying. Even with Facebook, my friends did not have a significant presence in my life. I realized that if my need for friendship and community was not being met, i needed to look outside Facebook.
Thirdly, Facebook was cluttering my life and my mind. When i begin to habitually check/refresh Facebook in my spare moments, it becomes hard to dedicate an afternoon or even an hour to something like reading, writing, spending time in quiet prayer, etc. without feeling anxious and impatient.
I understand that Facebook is just something nice for some people, while for others it could rightly be called an addiction (and it often is in a strangely lighthearted kind of way). But i think that all of us are affected by the false, constrained form of community that can be found in places like Facebook.
I recently became acutely aware of the deficient way of communicating that can be found in Facebook (broadcasting meaningless trifles or great joys or sorrows in exactly the same way to hundreds or thousands of people at once) as i was reading a volume of Thomas Merton's personal letters. More than anything Merton says in his correspondence, i was struck by Merton's general way of communicating. Merton's letters are personal, intimate, direct, and loving. They show a general care for his friends and acquaintances and a genuine interest in their lives. When Raissa Maritain died, Merton wrote a number of beautiful letters to Jacques Maritain over a six-month period expressing his sympathy and his deep love and appreciation for Raissa and Jacques. Today, it's not uncommon that when the loved one of a friend dies, we post our sympathies on their wall. I'm not criticizing the urge to show we care, but our contemporary way of communicating has made it so that the way we respond to that urge is the same way we show our friend a picture from the bar the night before or share a funny story we found online. Facebook has done a lot to level our communication to brief, shallow, impersonal wall posts and status updates. The least personal, least meaningful way of relating to others becomes the default.
It's sad in a way that in the age in which communication in any form with anyone in the world is possible in a matter of seconds we are failing so badly at communicating with each other. Expressive letter writing is almost nonexistent, and somehow, we're unable to write in that same personal, engaged manner by e-mail. I recently received a wall post from a friend whom i had not talked to in years, saying something like, "Hey Mark, I was just thinking about you and wondering how you're doing," to which i said something like, "Hey, i'm doing well. I'm living in Tegucigalpa right now. How are you?" to which my friend never responded. Rather than being glad to have heard from my friend after a long time, i felt deeply frustrated at our failure to really make a genuine connection and show interest in each other's lives.
Our profound failure to communicate is dangerous and leads to misunderstandings, hatred, and violence. Simply look at the simplistic rhetoric that has been shouted around lately by the media and politicians in the U.S., Israel, and Iran. If we want to begin to understand and love one another, and perhaps build a better world together, we need to relearn how to speak meaningfully and listen sincerely to each other, rather than shouting meaningless updates past each other. And for some of us like myself that might require deleting - i mean, deactivating - Facebook.
P.S. An Atlantic article on the relationship between Facebook and loneliness: Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
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