It was early in the morning, and I’d spent a couple of hours overnight listening to an unreachable smoke detector beep, and trying to soothe my panicked panting dog as he tried to crawl under me. It was my daughter’s first day back to school after a long break, and the rosy fingers of dawn were beginning to spread, and SOMEBODY was wrong on Facebook. Actually, pretty much everybody was. And I snapped.
I broke up with Facebook.
I’ve been contemplating how this application on my smartphone was driving me bonkers for a while now. I’d been slowly pruning my newsfeed of unsavory posts, of relatives with political differences, or people compulsively posting not-cute pictures of their baby/dog/car. (Cute pictures I like, but most people are horrible photographers.) Snip, snip. Trim away the high school acquaintances with their fancy cocktail parties and private jets. Snip, snip, go away pictures of baby’s first professional modeling job. If a friend were to call me, or send me an email even, and say, “Look! My baby is so cute, she’s professionally cute and I have proof!” I would probably be really happy for everybody. How exciting! Your baby is really adorable and I’m glad you’re getting some monetary compensation for it. But when it’s a post on Facebook, in my heart I feel the green jealous rage, and begin wondering why MY baby isn’t professionally cute.
I was down to hardly any posts, except for a few friends who did interesting things whom I didn’t see in real life. I kept some people around simply because they were witty. And of course, close relatives, and my adorable niece and nephew. But every now and again someone would pop up out of nowhere, complaining about how their infant wasn’t sleeping through the night (THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO!), or saying something else that was wrong, wrong I say!, and I would either check the comments to make sure that someone who agreed with me was voicing my opinion so that I wouldn’t have to, or comment myself. Also, I’m sure most babies turn out fine even if they are sleep trained (although my post-grad human development professor would disagree), and parents need to do what works for their own family, and what worked for me might not work for you, etc., so why did I feel the need to get involved? Because Facebook wants me involved.
That’s just part of it, though. Facebook was eating all of my time. It became a compulsion, a physical habit, a reflex, an empty gesture. Like the rat that sometimes got some sugar water and sometimes got zapped, I kept going back. Zap. Zap. Zap.
It’s not just that it made my self-esteem crumple, or that it made me angry at the world. Those are after all part and parcel of the human condition. There are a lot of good reasons to be grumpy at the world! What was getting my goat was how Facebook was taking my time away, my motivation away, from doing other, productive and/or pleasurable things. Like calling a friend with a new baby to check up on her, or meeting a friend to do art, or writing something substantial, or having a thought, or reading a book, or learning how to beat my husband at chess, or actually engaging with my daughter instead of glancing up from my phone once in a while to say “nice ballerina move!”
Facebook had become more about replacing socialization than about social networking. I need to see and hear and be with people. Facebook had become not only an empty proxy for that, but an all too easy and convenient substitution for me, an introvert with a smidge of social anxiety.
There are some people’s posts I’m going to miss. But maybe I could just call or email them instead? I talked on the phone to a friend this afternoon that suggested I call it an experiment and have it last a month. A month sounds good to me. I will say that it’s only been seven hours and I already feel liberated and light. Maybe this is simply the honeymoon period, like in a real breakup, before the abandonment sinks in. But I know that Facebook will always take me back.
(PS Your baby/dog/cat/car is really cute. You should text me a picture!)
(PPS I am really happy your baby/dog/cat/car has a modelling career. It is not your fault that I’m jealous of it.)
(PPPS I know babies are really tough the first year, and I’m sorry you’re struggling and I’d love to get a coffee with you or go for a walk or even just listen to you vent about how hard it is. Or maybe I can take the baby on a walk and you can take a nap?)
