Breaking Up With Facebook

I just heard a TED talk that has finally freed me up to write this post. It’s been mulling around in my brain for over a year and after reading the transcript of this particular TED I knew the speaker, Dr. Sherry Turkle, was verbalizing the exact things I felt, but hadn’t been able to put into words. The funny thing is this talk is an old one – 2012 – but I’m just catching it now. And I think for good reason. I couldn’t have processed this in the same way in 2012. After a year of almost complete internet relationship breakup, I think I’m ready to really talk.

“Across the generations, I see that people can’t get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, in amounts they can control. I call it the Goldilocks effect: not too close, not too far, just right.”

I was a facebook junkie from around 2008. I recall, like many new things, that I was resistant at first with comments like, “that’s what teenagers do” “isn’t this just the new MySpace?” “It’s just for people who want to hookup, not for happily married women”. But then I tried it, and then I got my girlfriends to try it and it became the tool we used to connect. My best friends were spread all over the country, I was in Southern California and my best girlfriends were in Central California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. We relished having a space where we could share pictures of our kids and have more conversations that weren’t limited to a few minutes here and there that were hampered by jobs, small children, time zones, house cleaning, church activities, school activities, local friends and of course our poor neglected husbands! We could log on when the house was finally quiet and check in with our besties, laughing at pictures of growing kids, connecting through long personal message threads. Soon our parents were logging on, wanting to know where their children had disappeared to, hoping to see more information about their grandkids. And at first, we worried that we would have to edit ourselves down now that the parents were showing up and then right around the corner, our kids started getting to those teenage years when they could have their own facebooks – again, way more editing. Of course, we still had the sanctity of the private personal message. 

“What’s wrong with having a conversation?” People say, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.”So that’s the bottom line. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete…”

As the years went on and as life got busier and our devices got smaller, our personal messages got less and less. We depended on connecting through the status message and commenting on those. Some of the more extroverted girlfriends were better at this than the others; those who weren’t interested in sharing everything with every person on their friends list. I’m sure it’s sort of obvious that I had no problem with posting. Whatever I felt, good or bad. I did edit, but I’m a pretty out there person so I edited enough that I knew if I was standing in a room with all my facebook friends, I wouldn’t care if they heard me saying my post out loud. In my mind, that was the most thoughtful kind of edit. But I’m kind of an all out there, what you see is what you get kind of person. Throughout my life my edit button has continually been broken. But now, in this virtual world, my best friends were starting to only know this edited, watered down version of myself. My local friends were starting to know me better because they knew the real, unfiltered version of me. At the time, I didn’t realize this. Even if you had asked me at the time, I would have said my closest friends know the real me. But as time goes on and experiences happen, people change. And if you are giving the whole group of your friends only the “best” version of yourself, what about the messy parts? What about when you aren’t the best version of yourself? What about when something devastating happens and you don’t have the ability or strength to edit yourself, how are your best, closest friends going to react when they can’t turn the power off and ignore you for a day or two? 

“Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves.And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.”

I saw the effects of this first hand when we moved across country into the same city where our best friends lived. We had once lived in the same city and our relationships were certainly messy. We were in the best and worst parts of life together. We were there through births of our children, rocky roads in our marriages, deaths, first steps, new jobs, spiritual growth, happy times and unhappy times. But after 5 years of a constant virtual friendship we were different. Things were harder than we expected. We couldn’t fall right back into step of our old friendships because we had developed this new “prettier” version of our friendship. And when you don’t have a delete button, what is the appropriate way to react when you get your feelings hurt? All these years you’ve been hiding behind a screen, what happens when reaction flits across your face before you can stop it? The dynamic of your relationship changes. One of you wants what you had back, the other wants the less messy version back and you both desperately just want to find your way back to your friendship. But sometimes that just can’t happen. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much one of you wants that friendship back, it’s best just to move on since you are neither the person you were in the past, nor are you the person you’ve shown yourself to be virtually. You certainly didn’t mean to show a false person to the world but the “best version” of yourself is a false person. Because in real life you are just the one person with all the good, bad and ugly versions of yourself all mixed in together. 

“Connecting in sips may work for gathering discreet bits of information, they may work for saying, “I’m thinking about you,” or even for saying, “I love you,” ….but they don’t really work for learning about each other, for really coming to know and understand each other. And we use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves.”

Last year for Lent I gave up all social media. Facebook, blogging, Pinterest (I’m a pinning fool), Twitter and Instagram. I’m not Catholic but my feeling about Lent is to spend that time you’ve given that particular thing up with the Lord. At first, it was truly like giving up an addiction. I was jumpy, always reaching for my phone and then putting it back down. Eventually, I had to delete the Facebook app from my phone because regardless of how I’d change the alerts it would continue to alert me that so and so had posted on my wall (what did they say?! What was going on??) I had no idea that I was such a social media junkie. I mean, I knew I was on it half the day. Really that made sense to me. I’m at home all day, disabled. My body has turned against me and besides short bursts of activity, it’s me and the pets, the television and my phone. Last year, I still couldn’t read for very long without developing a migraine and even knitting or crocheting was limited to little bits here and there. Thankfully now I’m able to read much longer before getting a headache (although just typing all of this out means I’ll have a headache for the rest of the day) and I knit until my hands ache too much to hold the yarn. But still I knit. Each item I make, a true labor of love. 

In those first weeks without social media I was a little lost. I felt disconnected from the world. I got my news from my fb feed or tweets. With social media, I knew what was happening in my hometown 3,000 miles away. Without social media was a black hole of zero information. I felt like I was floating in space. A vacuum of sound and air. And as I mentioned before, I’m an extrovert. My thoughts have to be talked about, mulled over, I want to be engaged with others. And as the days went on I was starting to think it wasn’t worth it. Yes, I was spending good time reading my Bible, journaling, praying but surely God wanted me connected to other people? It’s one of my giftings, shouldn’t I be using it? But once I got through the detox period (all addictions have to have the terrible detox period) my mind started to clear. There weren’t so many competing voices in my head. I didn’t reach for my phone as soon as I was stopped at a red light. I’d leave the phone in the other room and ignore it. And I started to think thoughts that weren’t formulated to be posted at a later time. Did I have friends on facebook or did I have fans? Do I need to have 75 people liking my thought just for that thought to have value? Do my words have to be retweeted to be significant. How was social media feeding my already super sized ego? I started to like the Stacy that didn’t need daily affirmations that I was good enough, that I was smart enough and gosh darn it, people liked me! 

Of course there were interactions that I only could have on facebook that I missed, a kind friend I have had since I was 3 – the only way we’ve ever connected over the years is through fb. Old friends I went to school with who have grown into interesting and thoughtful people, dear friends from my old job in SoCal. But I could call the people I love and have real conversations with them. Conversations that sometimes made me upset or mad – but I was okay with that because it felt true. It felt like I was starting to reenter real life and it was like putting on an old sweater that you hadn’t worn in a few years. It felt good, comfortable. It made me think, why hadn’t I tried this on earlier? 

One thing I haven’t discussed is the darker, drama-filled side of facebook. The person who doesn’t edit. The person who offends everyone and doesn’t know (or maybe care) what the consequences will be to their sarcastic or nasty reply. Or the misunderstanding from the post or comment that sounded like a joke in the writers head but sounded like an attack to the reader. Misunderstanding is a constant in the virtual word – and how can it not be? There are no facial expressions, no laughter, no tone of voice. Two people can read the exact same thing and one will hear sarcasm and laughter, a second person will hear a personal attack and end up either angry and saying something embarrassing (obviously I’ve done this – I have footinmouth disease, it’s chronic) or close the computer and walk away with a broken heart to just get over it, with no resolution (done this one too). This is not healthy conflict management! But without face to face interaction, is healthy conflict resolution even possible? I haven’t seen that happen yet. Recently one member of my family accidentally offended another member of my family on fb. I don’t even have to be on to get a screenshot pic of the offense five minutes after it has happened. It caused quite a stir in my family, lines were being drawn, tears were being shed, confusion and sadness were reigning supreme. In our immediate family! We love each other – we even like each other. We have no choice, we have to work it out – which happened once the offender explained and apologized to the offended. Once real communication happened. Not through fb, not on a forum where all his friends can see and all her friends can see. Not shutting down the site and crying alone and burying the offense like a razor blade in your heart. But instead with two people talking, explaining, apologizing, forgiving.  

“That feeling that no one is listening to me is very important in our relationships with technology. That’s why it’s so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed —so many automatic listeners.”

I’m alone most of the day. My kids are mostly grown, in college and high school. Even when they get home they either grunt or need a ride. My husband works hard and many hours at his job. I live in a place that’s a 36 hour drive to get to my mom and dad, my inlaws, or my siblings & sibling-inlaws – all of whom I love dearly. In other words, loneliness is a constant battle for me. Facebook had become my friend. It was filling an empty space. Even with the friends I had locally. They were connecting with mse on fb more than in person. A few months after my fb breakup, my closest local friend told me that she felt disconnected from me since I’d been off fb. That stuck with me. A lot sticks with me – I’m a ruminator, a muller- and that caused me all sorts of issues in life so, of course, also on fb.  At times my insecurities would take over – what if my friend doesn’t like my post? Is she saying something or did she just not see it? She likes all my posts – why not the one? For the insecure and slightly a bunch crazy like me – facebook can be a place full of landmines. One day it will be building up my ego, the next tearing it down. Sometimes it would depend on the time of the month, or how much pain I had that day, or how fragile and lonely I was feeling. How could I feel lonely with 400 friends? But I definitely did. That doesn’t make sense at all. 

“Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for each other? During my research I worked in nursing homes, and I brought in these sociable robots that were designed to give the elderly the feeling that they were understood. And one day I came in and a woman who had lost a child was talking to a robot in the shape of a baby seal. It seemed to be looking in her eyes. It seemed to be following the conversation. It comforted her.”

Guess what? In the few past years – but especially in the last year I’ve realized I’m okay without the edited, watered down version of relationships. I don’t need fans to tell me I’m a good parent, wife, sister – whatever. I don’t need sympathizers that say oh I’m sorry this is hard for you and then go on their merry way with life. When the hard times happened some people who I thought would be there in the dark to hold my hand, instead scattered like roaches, and other people filled in the gaps. I almost lost one of my oldest and dearest friends this week. And when I say lost, I mean lost from the planet – it’s a miracle she’s alive and it will take her a very long time to recover. Friends like her – who knows and loves the messy me – shouldn’t be taken for granted. There are only a few people in this world who will love and cherish the real, unedited you. I’m going to hang on to those people with my hands, with my voice, with my face and not depend on a virtual seal to be my friend. 

We expect more from technology and less from each other. And I ask myself, “Why have things come to this?”

And I believe it’s because technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control. But we’re not so comfortable. We are not so much in control.

I’ve decided for me, facebook is a thing of the past. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day, but today I doubt it. I went back to pinterest right after Lent – for me that’s just like online shopping without spending money. I tweet but mostly because no one is interested – it’s sort of like talking to myself. Blogging – well I don’t know on that yet. This may be a one and done or maybe I’ll just keep writing – I haven’t figured that out. 

This  fb breakup has been like any long term relationship breakup. I’ve lost friends through it, I’ve been sad, I’ve been lonely. But I don’t think that last one is a bad thing any more. When it’s quiet and I’m lonely, I have room to create. I have room to spend time with the Lord. I have room to be alone with my thoughts. I’m present with my family and not distracted by my phone. I don’t embarrass my husband with posts about him. I appreciate the time and friends I still have. Get this – I. Talk. On. The. Phone. How crazy is that one? I mean I still text too. But sometimes I get to have a conversation where one person speaks the other listens we interrupt each other we change topics without even realizing we’ve done it, we laugh and share and be honest. I don’t talk on the phone every day but I’d say once a week I have a great conversation with one of my friends or family and it fills my cup up until the next time. 

 

This was just my opinion. I don’t think facebook is evil and if it works out for you, then I’m glad for you. 😊 

All quotes are from the TED talk “Connected but Alone?” By Sherry Turkle. You can find the transcript here and I highly recommend it.