Dear Facebook, I Want My Friends Back
The first time I joined Facebook, I was overjoyed. I used to think of myself as a lonely person but suddenly I realized that I had so many friends in my life. I had just finished school, moved to a different city and moved on with my life, thinking that I will never have to look back again. But Facebook gave me an excuse to reconnect with old friends, even the ones I had never properly talked to when I was in school, being the shy, introvert girl I was.
On Facebook, I used to laugh at the posts of my friends, stare at their photos for hours to see how much they have changed, and engage in the never ending comments of pulling their leg. To the introvert in me, Facebook gave a chance to open up, allowing me to write all my thoughts without fear and share with my friends things I was too shy to say to their faces.
Little did I know that this virtual identity would eventually give me so much confidence that soon I would start imposing myself on others. Gradually, I started using Facebook not for connecting with my friends but for telling them what kind of person I was and what kind of person I wanted them to be. I started sharing issues I cared about, started following people and pages that shared the same thoughts as me.
I thought that by sharing these stories I could make a difference in the world. I thought I was helping the cause by spreading the word. I started adding ‘friends’ I hardly knew in real life, hoping that it will help spread the message to a greater audience. I felt that with every like, comment and share my posts got, I was helping in making this world a better place. But it is only now I realize how foolish I was.
It is only now I realize that by sharing those posts I am only creating divisions. Through every like, comment and share I was only finding out who agrees or disagrees with me, and who I should or should not be friends with. I started unfollowing people who shared things that made me angry. I started writing angry comments on the posts of people I couldn’t unfollow, telling them how wrong they were to hold the beliefs they held. I started avoiding them in my real life. After all, how could my shy, introvert self get the courage to face what my overly confident virtual self had done?
It is strange, now I miss that shy girl sometimes. Earlier, I didn’t mind hanging out with friends whose beliefs on important things I did not know, even if that meant speaking very little at a time. Today, I am afraid to sit in a coffee shop with friends I disagree with.
But today, I terribly miss my other friends. I miss the diversity our conversations used to have when I hung out with my friends. In my foolish attempts to save the world, I allowed myself to lose some real friends. In my foolish attempts to change the world, I forgot that the only change I could ever influence in this world was the one that I began with myself. How many people, I wonder, have I been able to influence by sharing those posts? Perhaps none. After all, how many times have I vowed to change my ways because of something that I saw on Facebook? If I am being honest with myself, not once! How could I be such a fool to think that a few seconds of read and scroll could bring about a change? Have I not known, thanks to the countless arguments I have had with my parents or my partner, that it takes much more time to change someone’s mind?
Today, after years I have realized again (though I have been telling my Facebook followers all the time) that if I really want to make a difference, I must begin by looking inwards. I realize that I make a difference in this world by constantly choosing to live the way I do. I make a difference in the lives of people I meet everyday. By sharing love, by sharing a smile or even a tear. By having a drink with them even though their gibberish makes me mad. By accepting them for who they are and by being there for them.
For it was being in the company of my old friends had I learned that it’s not just my opinions that matter in the world. It was by listening to their talk had I realized what all I had ignored while forming my own opinions.
Now I find myself trapped in this one dimensional shell where everybody is talking the same language that I talk, liking the same things I like, and telling me what I already know; and my former friends are nowhere to be seen. It is for this reason that I decided to quit Facebook and give myself a shot a getting my social life back.

