It’s not an original idea. Chances are good you’ve either done it yourself or you know someone who has given up Facebook for some length of time.
That’s what I did for the month of January. The biggest reason: I was concerned with the ubiquity of Facebook in my life. At the time, it was the first website I visited every day. I frequently checked it throughout the day—often while procrastinating—and I had become restless during any moment in the day where I wasn’t doing something. So if I was waiting for a bus, waiting in line in the grocery store, or waiting for a friend at a coffee shop, I would go on Facebook on my phone to pass the time.
Before my experiment began I thought I would feel disconnected. I thought I would miss out on events and exciting news. I thought I might feel lonely.
None of those things happened. I felt more calm and less distracted.
But more telling than my month away from Facebook were the habits I noticed when I resumed my use in February. Reading I did on the subject of social networking and the way it impacts our lives also shaped my thinking and helped me come to a few conclusions. I think the following two are the most important:
1. When you use Facebook often, it’s easy to compare yourself to others and become envious of their lives.
Prior to giving up Facebook for a month, I was acutely aware that I presented a highly edited, best-possible-version of myself online. It never occurred to me that other people do the same thing, and that when I look at the content people post on Facebook it sometimes makes me envious of the rock concert they went to, the vacation they went on, or the new house they bought.
In an article posted last month on RelevantMagazine.com entitled “Instagram’s envy effect,” writer Shauna Niequist points out that “watching other peoples’ post-worthy moments on Facebook is always going to yield a prettier version of life than the one you’re living right now.”
“My life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life,” Niequist writes. “Everyone’s life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t.”
“But seeing the best possible, often-unrealistic, half-truth version of other people’s lives isn’t the only danger of the Internet,” she goes on to say. “Our envy buttons also get pushed because we rarely check Facebook when we’re having our own peak experiences. We check it when we’re bored and when we’re lonely, and it intensifies that boredom and loneliness.”
I didn’t realize this before I gave up Facebook for the month of January, but it certainly has rung true in the months since. The less time I spend on Facebook, the less I compare myself to others and the more content I am.
2. Facebook doesn’t actually help me connect with the people I care about in meaningful ways. In fact, it probably gets in the way of meaningful connection.
I gave up Facebook during a period in my life when I was thinking a lot about vulnerability, and challenging myself to be more vulnerable, open and honest with the people in my life. Previously, it was difficult for me to share my thoughts and feelings with even the people closest to me. It was easier for me to say something via e-mail or Facebook than to risk exposing myself in a potentially messy phone or face-to-face conversation. Or I avoided issues altogether and lost myself in virtual environments.
In her book Daring Greatly, social work professor Brené Brown defines vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.” Over and over, she stresses that human beings are made for connection, and that we can’t connect with one another without being vulnerable.
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy and creativity,” she writes. “It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability and authenticity. If we want to be fully engaged, to be connected, we have to be vulnerable.”
I’ve found social media seductive because I think it will remove the risk from my relationships. But time and again, social media has shortchanged me and I’ve come up feeling empty and more lonely than I started.
Read enough about social media and you will see this theme come up time and again.
In his book The Peep Diaries, Toronto-based journalist Hal Niedzviecki points out that most of us have no desire to use social networking to connect in the real world.
“We’d rather be at home peering at each other online than putting ourselves out there for friendships, messy emotional connection, and all the responsibilities and frustrations that come with forming attachments to others,” he writes. “We’re tired, we’re stressed, and we’re conditioned now to get home from our daily labours and lose ourselves in virtual environments, whether they be TV, video games, other people’s profiles and blogs, or our own.”
Niequist agrees that this is problematic, arguing that “community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters.”
There are positive benefits to websites like Facebook, though. One example I’ve found is observing the way members of Mennonite Church Canada interact in MC Canada’s Facebook group. Sharing articles, asking questions and debating topics online is one way we can connect as a church.
Ultimately, Facebook is neither good nor bad in and of itself. But it’s important to remember that we need to be intentional about our Facebook use, or it can quickly take up too much of our time.
It’s also important to remember that nothing will ever replace the experience of talking with each other face to face.
Aaron Epp, 29, is a member of Douglas Mennonite Church, Winnipeg.
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