The Dark Side of Facebook

         I’m starting to ponder the dark side of Facebook ...you know...the side they don’t tell you about? Don’t get me wrong. I love it. Some days I love it a little too much. Run across a name you hadn’t thought of in years and “poof” …You’re able to catch yourself right up with their life, their fam, their accomplishments…That part I love. It’s like those folks who send you year end recap letters for Christmas cards, only you can read these daily. Can you imagine if you got those Christmas card letters every day of the year? How soon would you start to trash ‘em? Not us. When it comes to my FB friends, I can scroll around for hours.

            The part I’m starting to question is what it’s doing to us as a community…what it’s doing to us mentally…what it’s doing to us spiritually. Not to make light of Barbara Streisand, but we really are People Who Need People, (even us loners) though perhaps, we may not think we need people quite so much as we really do because we’re getting our fix through FB.  But is it a fix, really? Is this technology substitute for the real thing going to catch us in the end?

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has interaction at every stage. First comes food and shelter (items for which others are not just needed, but required). Starting with your mother, it extends to family, then peers, classmates, workmates, mate-mates, etc. Moving up the scale Maslow says we need love--again family, friends, other people. Then there’s intimacy. Yep. Gotta have others for that (no jokes here). Next comes self esteem, which involves…you got it—others, after all this one’s predicated on respect of others. Finally, the pyramid peaks at self-actualization. We all hope to get there. Some do. Some do not. But self-actualization of all the stages is the pinnacle of needing others as in finding out who we are, we come to embrace what life is about and our role in it. It’s the ultimate in grasping how we fit in to the greater whole.

The concept of community is weighing on my mind these days not because I’m lonely, but because I’m watching a world of folks like me, living lives we’ve chosen and love. But nearly everyone I know is in some state of overwhelm. How can that be? Perhaps it has something to do with us THINKING we’re getting our emotional needs met, but instead, we’re ingesting the potato chip version of things. It’s filling at the time, but it pales in comparison to the deeper, more substantive version of human interaction that only comes with deeper reflection, longer conversations and personal one-on-one time.

This past week I’ve made a conscious effort to incorporate more personal, real-time visits into the mix of my week. For starters, a real time visit is going to take time. You commit to face time, you’ve got a drive to make, usually a meal to consume. Conversation will ensue and I don’t have any friends who are capable of keeping that brief, nor should they when sharing what’s going on in their lives. This is the substance of what life is about.

What’s more, sharing with these friends reminds me I have other friends I would likewise like to block off time for. But somewhere along the way I must tend to goats, garden, writing, house work, yard work…. It’s no wonder there’s a sense of overwhelm. And on top of this guilt for feeling overwhelmed just because I want to catch up personally. Then it hits me: Facebook has afforded me the luxury of taking on more and more friends …keeping up with those I’ve met through travels and through time…those I haven’t seen in years…Thank God for that Facebook scroll that catches you up on everyone, where a quick thumb’s up let’s them know you’re thinking of them.  But what if that’s robbing us of the nutrients of our relationships. What if we really DO all need people? (and not just checking in with them virtually).

Having had a couple of purely joyful visits…complete with the sharing of what’s inspiring us and what’s scaring us to death, as compared to the quick fix of a selfie of a goat to send word that “We’re still hanging in!” What if our souls require the personal energy of another, minus the electronics we too often buffer in between? Remember the day when Farmer Fred just dropped in at your grandma’s? (This still happens quite a bit in the country; was one of the toughest things I had to adjust to coming in. We always called first in the city, but by gum if  Thurman knocks, you can bet your bottom dollar I’m getting off line, cause if he’s gone to the trouble to drive here, he’s got something to tell me, teach me or show me.)

I have no answers; only theories. But I will tell you this. I’ve come to recognize (as one who reflects on her time commitments quite often, and feels quite guilty for not getting to them all), that for all those folks I would truly love to catch up with, there simply aren’t enough hours. If I were independently wealthy and didn’t have to give a minute to working or cleaning a house (which I’m not, and I do) Facebook has opened a floodgate of reminders of childhood friends past and friends I've picked up along the way…that I mean it when I say “We should get together” but the math of the equation just doesn’t add up.

 Thanks to Facebook, I have MORE friends than ever, and I know more about their lives than ever before. I have new friends I've never met, and some I would genuinely like to. I deeply care when a pet passes away and I honestly pray when asked. What’s more, I really WOULD like to catch up if they’re ever in my neck of the woods, but given my schedule isn’t exactly lying there with big holes in it, what are the odds that that’s really gonna happen?

Point is there’s a give and take for everything and so far Facebook has basically cost us nothing (or so we think). It’s brought the world to our door and everyone’s door to our world, but who’s responsibility is it to be realistic about what we can commit to?

It’s the downside of Facebook. I won’t go so far as to blame everyone’s overwhelm on Zuckerberg, but I will there’s an undercurrent that no one’s picking up on. There’s a silent, slow dripping angst that comes in the form of wishing we could see more people, make more visits, stay a little longer, truly visit in the good old fashion porch swing kinda way, but instead, we shoot a miniature thumb’s up and hope that will suffice.

Our excitement for entering the web’s enticing waters came with a price tag nobody warned us about. I for one am fessing up. I feel a good deal of guilt each day for not being able to accommodate every single person who asks to catch up or come see the goats. I have a list of folks to call back, some coming through cell phone and texts, more and more coming as private FB messages. It’s not that I don’t want to keep up. I just have things happening that require my time owing to the commitments of life. And the sad (or good) new is, I’m not alone.

No, they didn’t stick a warning label on FB when they sold it to us. They simply said, “Come. Click around. Catch up with everybody. KEEP up with everybody! Isn’t this fun?” (And it is.) But the counter not so fun part to that they didn’t warn you about was this dull aching nudge of a feeling that I’m getting further and further behind on things for wanting to go catch up more. It’s like our souls know we need each other, but our real world lives are relegated to small snippets, and the craving is ever growing.

(For the record, I have no answers; only observations. But I am starting to draw a parallel. I have come to notice that my own silent creeping state of overwhelm is in inverse proportion to the time I spend on Facebook getting high off catching up with everyone else, though rest assured, I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.) 

Here’s hoping there’s another solution.