“The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.”
George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
“I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.”
Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”
When I created my Facebook four years ago, in August of 2008, I was a timid freshman struggling to navigate the turbulent social currents of high school. I didn’t fit in. (Who did?) At the start, Facebook provided an outlet that I could retreat to, a “safe zone” of carefully structured, measured interaction between acquaintances I had barely seen outside of school. It was comforting to have the familiar blue-and-white to fall back on when my introversion and still-developing social skills made face-to-face conversation — and even phone conversation — an awkward and exhausting ordeal. I didn’t care that the majority of my “friends” weren’t people I felt comfortable carrying on an actual dialogue with. Like Linus’ security blanket, Facebook was always with me, offering the semblance of a social circle from the app on the iPod touch in my pocket or simply from the shadowy recesses of my mind.
Facebook messed up my mind in more ways than one. It also affected — in real-time — the way I interacted with people every day. What I saw on others’ profiles created pre-formed judgements that spoiled actual social contact with them. Facebook gave me hasty distaste for some and a sugar-coated impression of others. In short, my perception of others’ character was warped before I even had a chance to get to know them. Facebook stunted my social progress by lending me a false sense of intimacy with those I barely knew. It was a crutch and a drug, and I quickly became addicted to it.
Flash forward to today: my social skills are marginally better, I hope, and I can sit down at my keyboard and reflect honestly on my use (and abuse) of this now-ubiquitous social networking site. Facebook serves in my everyday life as a utility, from which I can send out invitations to a senior piano recital, post photos from Outdoor Action, and keep tabs on my friends and family back at home and elsewhere. It’s still a crutch (I use it all the time to circumvent actual conversation) and it’s most certainly still a drug. But I think that with a certain awareness of the functions it plays in my life, I can more frankly gauge when it’s taking a role that it shouldn’t or simply being a huge timesuck. (Speaking of which: this May ’11 eWeek article notes that networking utilities “translate into $10,375 of wasted productivity per person annually.” Not 100% related, but a horrifying correlation nonetheless.)
Awareness or not, I won’t be leaving anytime soon. Short of leaving behind modern life, on a Walden-esque retreat, I will continue to rely on Facebook and use it as the essential utility it was designed to be. For deleting my account, among other things, would destroy what has become a comprehensive, albeit varnished, record of my past, and an extension of my mind.