Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to a conclusion. Things were better in my life before the introduction of things such as Facebook, Myspace and Google Plus. For those of you telling me to get off my high horse, hear me out. Do you remember when you were a kid (by that I mean junior high through high school) and you called your friends or a person you had a crush on? Remember how exciting that was? I remember calling my friends and feeling like it was an olympic event, usually it was to plan who was coming over whose house and what we wanted to do while we were there. Or calling a girl I had a crush on, when I had to muster up some courage to finally dial her number and wait for someone to answer (this was before we all had cell phones, so occasionally her mother, or worse, her father, answered the phone). I now realize that came with a rush of adrenaline, which is something I don't receive anymore because I don't make phone calls. Facebook has sucked all of the excitement out of communicating with people. All it allows you to do now is rack up people in your friends list, play mafia wars and farmville, and stalk people in a non creepy way (by the way, it's still creepy, but I must admit, even I did it). I forgot to mention how Facebook uses all your information to sell ads on their website also, same with Google Plus I'm sure.
I have been planning to leave Facebook for a while now. I waste so much time everyday just checking the dang thing (and getting no new notifications in return), that I could use that time towards doing something new like going outside and exercising, or calling a few people, or god forbid, studying. For those of you who may not understand, here's a little research for you. According to Nielsen, an international advertising and marketing company, US internet users spent an astounding 53.5 BILLION MINUTES on Facebook, and that was just for May of 2011! That's 891,666,666 HOURS! There are about 95 million US Facebook users, so that would equal out to about 9.5 hours per person per month on the Facebook site, and I know that the number is even higher for some people. Don't believe me, here's the link: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/americans-spent-535-billion-minutes-on-facebook-in-may-2011/3566.
At first I kept defending my actions by stay saying lines such as "How will I keep in touch with people?" or "Facebook keeps me in the know." I now believe that those who care about you will stay with you or find their way back to you, and the ones that lose touch either don't care or simply don't want to talk with you anymore. I have had it, and one of my friends named Rich put it so eloquently in his message to all his friends regarding why he was leaving Facebook:
"Hi Friends,
I am tired of Facebook. I am tired of the way our society is turning and how Facebook contributes to it. I hope to stay in contact with all of you, but I would rather get an email or a phone call from you, instead of impersonal, yet all too personal sometimes, Facebook posts about your life. Please take down my phone number and email address, or even write a letter to me the old fashioned way, so we can stay in contact. In a week I'm leaving Facebook and probably never coming back. If you want, please reply with your contact info so I can stay in touch with you.
Hope to hear from you soon. I'm going to enjoy life in a little bit more good old fashioned, traditional American way."
I couldn't have said it any better myself. Somewhere along the way, Facebook has stopped being a tool to communicate for me and become a way to make people become antisocial by being OVERLY social. Some of you are outgoing and social enough where you can make Facebook, Twitter and meeting people out in public all work smoothly, but that doesn't work for me. If I put more energy into one thing, the other suffers. For example, I put so much energy into Facebook, eventually my social skills are going to suffer, and I've noticed this happening to me already. I'm so used to talking with someone behind a computer screen that I forget how to properly interact with people.
I'm not against technology one bit. In fact, I think it's crucial to embrace technology. I currently have an email account, Skype, this blog of course, and even a twitter account (which I do not post on, I use it to receive news and information quickly from people/groups/organizations/media outlets that I follow). In fact, I encourage everyone to communicate with me, whether it's by phone, by email, Skype, Facetime, or heck, I may even start up an AOL Instant Messenger account! As long as it's personal, I'm more than happy to chat. Speaking of chat, that was the only feature I really used on Facebook.
So my message to everyone is, enjoy your Facebook. Enjoy your timeline, your ticker, your private profile not being private. Enjoy summarizing your thoughts in 480 characters or less. I'm going to do something a little more worthy of my time.
