Confessions of a Facebook addict

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I love that it allows me to access information on virtually any topic with a simple Google search ( I don't think that my brother-in-law who works for Yahoo has ever read a single one of my posts, so I think I am safe to admit that I Google search). I also hate that technology allows me to access information on virtually any topic with a simple Google search. I will now morph into an 80-year-old woman.........drum roll please..........the technology of our day is turning out a generation of kids who don't know how to work, don't know how to write or speak basic English, are incapable of having a face to face conversation with an actual human being, and who have serious issues with entitlement and instant gratification. In my day, when we had to do a report for school, we actually had to look in an encyclopedia.........one with pages.......it's called a book.......ever heard of it? We had to research, write and rewrite. Kids these days can click a mouse a few times, copy and paste and voila! We learned how to write in cursive! We learned how to use proper grammar and how to address others with respect and in complete sentences!!! We would have thought that lol was a spelling error by someone trying to write about a temporary pause or decline in activity. We would have thought that LMAO was a secret government code.

Writing that, I can almost imagine what I will look like 50 years from now.......I will probably be shrunken to about 4' 7" with a bad purple/gray dye job. The thing is, my 27 year old self shares many of the same sentiments. In my very first blog post, I described my husband and myself as being "Mormish" (Mormon Amish). This is because, two years ago, we didn't even have the Internet and I had never owned a cell phone. Fast forward two years......We now have 10 meg high-speed Internet and I have an Android (for the less tech-savvy, I do not have a space-aged robot named Data in my closet....an Android is a "smart phone"). I had actually had a Facebook account for a while before we connected to the Internet at home. I would check my account once a week at my grandma's house. For the first little while after we got the net at home, I would log in to Facebook maybe once every couple of days. I would update my status once in a while and I rarely posted pictures. Soon, I started thinking of witty things I could post at random times during the day.... I began reconnecting with more old friends and losing track of time as I mindlessly scrolled through their 20 albums, each containing 100 pictures. I started craving the acceptance I felt when people "liked" my status, and feeling rejected when no one did. I became the Sally Field of Facebook......."You like me, you really like me!" I began comparing my paltry attempt at homemade bread to the gourmet deserts my friends posted gorgeous pictures of online. Shamefully, I even began to post a few "brag posts" about my own children.....something I said I'd never do. A few weeks ago, a brick fell out of the sky and conked me in the head (maybe we should go with an anvil.....sounds more exciting).......an anvil fell out of the sky and conked me in the head, pulling me out of my cyber daze. "This is not me!", I thought.......this girl who was numbly scrolling through status updates about everything from the latest weather forecast to people's bowel habits (not joking......one reason I am leaving Facebook.....there really isn't anyone that I want to get to know that well........TMI......Lol.......LMAO). Where was the girl who used to read essays by Ralph Waldo Emmerson or poems by Emily Dickinson when she had a few moments of quiet time? Where was the introspective writer who used to sit in silence (in the rare moments when all three children were occupied) and contemplate the purpose and direction of her life? She was lost in a world of people pleasing virtual reality. Shortly after this "aha moment", I was talking to my best friend on the phone. She had been having similar feelings about her relationship with social networking. Together we decided to bite the bullet......to go cold turkey.....to delete our Facebook accounts. It was a hard decision. The "love" part of my relationship with technology comes from the fact that I am now able to sneak a peek into the lives of good friends who live far away, and who are doing amazing things with their lives. However, on the "hate" side is the fact that I was beginning to feel like I was wasting valuable time staring at a computer screen; time which I could have been using to enrich relationships with people who were often physically in the same room with me!

Step number one of my Facebook detox has begun......I have a problem and I know it. As happens any time one tries to give up an addiction or obsession, no sooner had I made my decision to leave Facebook, than I started having doubts and making justifications..... I can limit my time........I will only check it once a week......no one will read my blog anymore.....I will have no way to keep tabs on friends I never see. With the help of another anvil (would whoever keeps throwing those things please knock it off?.......) I realized that I had to give Facebook up totally and completely, or I would eventually revert back to my status scrolling ways. I explained it to a friend this way: "Me keeping my Facebook account would be like an alcoholic locking booze in the liquor cabinet." It has become apparent that I do not have that much self control when it comes to social networking. It has also become apparent that I need to stop spending so much time reading about other people's lives and to start more fully living my own life. Looking back on my "Mormish" days, I remember having more of an overall sense of peace and contentment with my life..... tucked away in my own sleepy corner of the world, trying to make a difference in my own little sphere. I was not bombarded by a constant stream of information, and yet, in a way, I was more informed, more aware. So it is with mixed feelings that I say goodbye to my network of cyber friends. I have been inspired by many of you. However, it is time to once again remember how to feel inspired by my own life. I will continue to write blog posts. I usually post once a week or once every other week. This blog is one of the few things that has kept my creative juices flowing. But I need to get a life! It's hard to find material to write about when you don't have one! As of March 12, 2012, I will be Facebook free. I am delaying my exit from the social network for a bit so that friends can get me their contact info and sign up to follow my blog (hint hint......I have never said I was above shameless self promotion), or at least take down the url. Until that day, you can probably expect to see me on Facebook quite regularly. Like any good addict, I am getting my last fix before I have to quit!