I Think I Hate Facebook

I have had mixed feelings about Facebook for a long time now. In fact, I had deleted my account for almost two years but recently reinstated it. I wanted to connect with some friends and family that I don’t see much.

Most of us use Facebook to show off the best of us and the best of our lives. A friend of mine rightly coined it as “the Facebook life”. For the most part, we don’t post our struggles, trials and tribulations. We post our joys, trips, and fun stuff.

Here is one of the problems with that; I post that I got to go somewhere fun with a few friends of mine. Someone reads it and gets hurt feelings that they were not invited. Someone else reads it and thinks, ‘I wish I could afford to do that’.

Someone posted that they got to go on a week- long vacation with their husband. I might get jealous because the only time that has ever happened for us is our honeymoon. Someone else reads it and thinks, ‘I wish my husband would just take me on a date’!

Why can’t we just be happy for others who get new purses, new shoes, new cars or new houses? Why do I get sad if I see past best friends who have moved away having fun with new friends?

Then there are the people who post every 5 minutes what they are doing to give us a play by play of their lives. Really?? You have time for that? How many hours a day are wasted on this anyways?

I realize some people use Facebook appropriately. They have real live friends that they do life with and just use Facebook as an added fun bonus to their social network. Or they use it to keep in touch with friends around the world! Employers and teachers can use it to find out someone's likes or dislikes and whereabouts so watch out!

I am sure there are other positive aspects to Facebook that I am missing here.But here lies a real problem; we roam each other’s pages without even making comments. We can see what is going on in someone’s “Facebook life” without ever communicating at all.

We say it is a tool to stay connected with lots of people. Ya, I guess. In our non- real lives that we post like a “brag book” as another friend calls it. If I really want to catch up with a friend, why don’t I just pick up the phone and have a conversation? Because I am too damn busy!

What do we prefer best, is it that we like people being jealous of the picture perfect version of our lives or is that we only want to know the surface level of what is going on in other’s lives?

We have a school bus stop by our house and you will see 5 or 6 middle school students all standing in a row texting on their phones instead of talking. Who knows, maybe they are texting or Facebooking the person 2 people down from them!

We have replaced a real person for a keyboard to say we have hundreds of friends. Call me old fashioned but I like face to face, eye to eye or even voice to voice contact. I have a deep desire to know and be known beyond the computer screen.

I have come to the conclusion that I think I hate Facebook and I will just have to use my time to make more phone calls and coffee dates.