Too much Facebook

For Lent this year, I decided to give up Facebook.
I’ve given up Facebook during the 40-day period for the past three years.
It’s a good period of time. I gain some distance from my computer, grow closer to my friends and actually manage to get some homework done.
At the end of the 40 days, I always question why I use Facebook in the first place.
Within the first month of returning, I rarely use it.
But around the end of April, my Facebook use returns to “normal.”
What is it about Facebook that keeps us so hooked?
I’ve told a few of my friends that checking Facebook is like checking the refrigerator when you’re craving something.
You know what’s in there, but you insist on checking every ten minutes despite that nothing changes.
When it comes to Facebook, there isn’t really anything on it that changes from the last time you checked -- if you check frequently like I do.
I’ve always used the excuse that Facebook is a great way to network, socialize, and stay informed.
Perhaps it’s a good networking technique, and many of the groups that I’m a member of on campus post events and updates on their group pages, but socializing?
Um, I’m gonna need to stop you there.
Socializing is about human contact.
Facebook may represent real people behind another computer screen, but are you really talking to them?
Not really. Facebook may also be a way to communicate with people all over the world, but not in the way we should be communicating with people.
There’s a phone -- not texting. There’s video chat.
We have so many different ways to actually talk to people.
What is it about Facebook? Convenience?
I do appreciate that all of my ‘friends’ are in one place and I can see what they are up to at any given moment, but...just, no.
“I use Facebook for the pictures.” Ok, creeper.
While sharing pictures is nice and dandy, there is a level of observation that goes beyond the zone of friendship and right into creeper status.
I’ve run into a few cases, especially as a freshman at Mercer, where I recognized someone from Facebook way before I met them in person.
I don’t really feel comfortable with the idea of someone knowing me better by something I posted on a website than by actually talking to me, but I take part in that activity every single day.
Our society is being run by Facebook.
If you don’t have a Facebook, people begin to assume that you are hiding something.
I don’t really advocate the use of Facebook, but I have failed at every attempt to walk away from Facebook for good.
I swear something about it keeps drawing me in.
Whatever the status of your relationship with Facebook, I believe you should take note of how often you use it versus how often you actually talk to your friends face-to-face. The ratio may surprise you.