So its the first free day after all my Midterms.
Back in high school, during Midterms, people would sometimes “delete” their Facebook page in order to concentrate on their studies. I put quotations around delete because, as we know, clicking delete doesn’t actually delete your page.
In fact, people “deleted” Facebook all the time. When a friend’s boyfriend in Fuji (long story) un-facebook official’d her, she had me change her password — effectively deleting her page until she decides to send herself the password reset email.
It’s becoming more and more common now — somehow deleting Facebook removes and insulates you from the world at large. Don’t want to know how all of your friends were accepted into college while you weren’t? Delete Facebook. Have millions of papers due tomorrow? Delete Facebook.
But, you know, most everyone returns sooner or later.
It’s pretty much like the internet — while we could live for a couple weeks mass without stepping into the world wide web, we cannot afford to be cavemen for the rest of our lives. While we could be electronically friendless, no one really wants to be. It’s merely a temporary measure — to just let you focus when you need it.
It’s an interesting dynamic we have go on.
On one hand, we recognize that Facebook is unnecessary and perhaps even harmful to our abilities to focus and to work at peak efficiency. We realize that, sometimes, its better to force unplug ourselves from this frankly addicting social network and remove the distraction from our lives. We didn’t need Facebook before it existed and we certainly don’t now. In fact, after deletion, we don’t get huge urges to log on to Facebook or feel like we are completely disconnected from human civilization. In this sense Facebook is merely a pastime and something that is fun to use and play with.
On the other hand, most of us still choose to reinstate our accounts, hinting that perhaps Facebook isn’t as expendable as it might seem. Despite not really getting huge craving for Facebook during the times we need it deleted, many of us would also feel somewhat weird not accessing the social network after the time we needed it deleted is over. Without fail, we will reactivate our accounts after the period we needed it gone is over.
Perhaps this is the difference between Facebook and all our other Social Interactions. With Facebook, we have more control. We can choose to simply turn it off temporarily and all will be OK. However, at the end of the day, Facebook is something we end up going back to.