It's Not You, It's Me

If you are my Facebook friend, and you've noticed my recent absence, I must tell you that it's nothing personal. I would never un-friend you, I promise. Someone did that to me once and it caused me a ridiculous amount of angst. (I'm over it.) I would, however, un-friend Facebook. And a couple of weeks ago, in order to step back and ponder the drug that is Facebook, I deactivated my account.

It's the "in" thing to do, apparently, since there's even an official "Quit Facebook Day" quickly approaching. Recently I've come across articles about detoxing from Facebook all over the place. Privacy concerns seem to be paramount, but to me it's more personal than just data (which, of course, can be quite personal).

I've been in the habit of posting links on FB to articles that I find interesting. Often--not always--when I do so, I have a particular FB friend or group of friends in mind, who I think would enjoy the link, hate the link, laugh at the link with me, or react in some predictable way or another. I've recently figured out the hard way, though, that all my other FB friends see those links too. (Duh!) And I don't know about you, but my FB friends are a wonderfully diverse group. Someone I haven't seem since childhood, for example, could easily take one of those links the wrong way, if I intended it for my fellow forty-something Catholic mom friends, or vice-versa.

I'd been thinking of FB as a big party, where I got to see everybody I ever knew in my whole life all together in one place. "Share the love!" I thought. And share I did--whatever was on my mind. Now I wish I'd been a bit more circumspect, because at least one of the links I posted seems to have hurt someone's feelings.

See, the thing about FB is that there's no context for discussion. You can't sit down and hash things out over a cup of coffee. You can't roll your eyes when you say something tongue-in-cheek. You can't see when the other person is starting to frown, and quickly reorganize your point. You can't even know who's "listening" to your conversation! And all that sets up a perfect storm of potential for hurt feelings, which isn't what I intended when I signed up for FB, at all.

This is, I suppose, what everyone's talking about when they decry social media and how it has impacted contemporary communication and our relationships. Of course it's much easier to type something bold, brash, and hurtful than it is to say it to someone's face. Even though a FB profile isn't anonymous, it can only provide a one-dimensional perspective of someone, which can hardly represent the whole person.

All that's not to say that FB isn't worth doing. Sure, it's fun. The best part is finding old friends, some of whom I never thought I'd find again, ever! So cool! And regardless of whatever overanalyzing anyone does about how social media are changing "kids today," there's no turning back the clock. It's the new reality. As I've just learned, the key thing with FB is to treat FB friends with just as much care as real-life friends, because, after all, they're just as real.

The Holy Father gives us bloggers and Facebookers his blessing, calling on Christians to

"utilize the new technologies of communication in a positive way and to realize the great potential of these means to build up bonds of friendship and solidarity that can contribute to a better world"

and appealing for cyberspace to be a place that promotes a

"culture of respect, dialogue and authentic friendship where the values of truth, harmony and understanding can flourish."

Yeah, that's it. What he said. :) As always, he's got it just right. If only I'd followed his words in the first place! But I don't suppose he has time to help solve the data privacy issues?!