I began flirting with Facebook almost 8 years ago, concurrently dating Myspace and not convinced either was a worthy long-term partner. Without acknowledging it, and despite it being entirely consensual (with tickboxes reminiscent of “do you like me, yes, no, maybe?”), it was Facebook that became my integrated life-partner; It didn’t just live in my browser, I carried it in my pocket, it buzzed its way into my consciousness during dinners, meetings, and discussions. I was being tagged and photographed, mentioned and liked. My calendar now resided as part of invitations that were only on Facebook. I went from having 40 photos to having 1,400 photos whose souls had been sold to the internet. My 400 ‘friends’ watched my life unfold, ‘hilarious update’ after ‘hilarious update’. Facebook saw first dates, last dates, birthdays, love, happiness, achievements, travel milestones (but I was a fair weather friend never owning my own tears and frustrations).
And then there was the day that my status update changed proudly once I had met someone that I believed to be so very different. For a year and a half Facebook kept track as we traversed three continents, 16 countries, countless cities. We shared photos, events, comment strands, spotify messages to start and end our days with music. So when I suddenly got a notification that I should update my relationship status (it seemed the other half had unceremoniously decided to exit Facebook and our relationship without any prior warning), I had no other idea how to extract myself from something that was invariably going to cause me increased pain except to also end my relationship with Facebook. Hurried conversations with a best friend on the other side of the world, passwords exchanged, and she officially broke up with Facebook for me, suspending my account. I no longer had to experience that sinking feeling every time I opened my browser, turned my phone on to see a little red circle with a number that could contain some vestige of our once-shared-life.
What came next convinced me that I had been in two unhealthy relationships. And the one with Facebook was actually the more shocking to me.
The first night without Facebook was the hardest. Heartbroken, sleep not coming to me, I automatically reached for my phone to distract myself with someone else’s life, pictures of someone else’s thoughts or random links that I could lose myself in. I caught myself turning to Facebook on at least an hourly basis and, because I had deleted the application, was then left just holding my phone with nothing much else to do. Without realizing it, I had become addicted to my Facebook relationship. During the days that followed, I would catch myself making up witty, astute one-liners to accompany just about every event as it happened (which, obviously, my ‘friends’ all simply needed to know about), subtly rewriting the event to get the maximum like-factor out of it: thinking of how many comments and thumbs-up this action, this experience, this image would get, what spin I could put on it, how much stretching the truth to get a laugh was really stretching the truth and actually, incrementally changing my own memories. Without my realizing it, I had invited Facebook into every single moment of my life as it was happening, not just those moments that I subsequently chose to write updates about. I had allowed a new lens to be placed over the way that I viewed my own days and all my experiences. I discarded certain moments, preferred others and acted on behalf of an audience that may or may not validate them.
Perhaps the most startling revelation came to me as I looked back through the photo albums I had created and realised that I had become too dependent on the affirmation I was receiving from my Facebook relationship: I had started sacrificing the moments I was in to the thoughts of how others may perceive those moments later. I realised that I had been more intent on portraying my life optimally than actually fully experiencing the individual moments. I had been more worried about what others might think of that photo (was his arm tight enough around me? Did we look happy enough? In love enough?), than worried about how that moment was being experienced by both of us.
For 6 weeks, Facebook and I saw other people and had absolutely no contact with each other…
…and a strange thing happened.
Facebook had always allowed me to be connected to all my friends 24/7; I had duly noted every major life event, plea, request and snide remark. I knew what was going on in everyone’s lives! Suddenly, though, I had to revert to emails, phone calls and meeting people in person. I was ‘forced’ to ask questions, listen to stories, and see fleeting reactions and emotions cross my friends’ faces as they talked to me in person. For 6 weeks, I made a deal with myself to see a different friend every day. And I realized that, although I had been able to see so many snippets of interactions via Facebook, I had started accepting that as their lives and stopped being able to truly see my friends as their entire three dimensional selves. I had believed myself a part enough of their life just by passively acknowledging their newsfeed. In those 6 weeks, I re-learned what it meant to actually be friends with so many people, to actually participate in their lives and thoughts and events. I became a better friend again, I saw more of my city again, I realized that the ‘convenience’ of instantaneous passive participation in friendships is not worth the sacrifice of my relationships. I had the chance to lose the need for external validation of my personal moments, and my interactions became entirely my own again.
It’s true, Facebook and I started talking again (mostly because I was missing events, minimally because of the few worried people who thought I had died and no one had told them- sorry!). A life without Facebook also wasn’t without difficulties considering how many other services are tied up with that one single login (thanks for no assistance here Spotify and thanks for making things easy Air Bnb). My relationship with Facebook, however, definitely remains broken — and I am so grateful for that. In cafés, trains, walking down the street, I see people flicking through images of other people’s lives, uploading the latest picture of their latté or lunch rather than looking up and seeing what is going on around them. I am discovering small moments that I had forgotten how to experience and existing entirely within those moments. I am re-experiencing how fulfilling my friendships can be when I am not just passively involved. And I am so much the happier for it.
So, Facebook, it’s not you, it’s me, we simply want different things from life. Let’s just be friends.
