Dislike

I want to quit Facebook. I have wanted this for quite a while. Yet, I always get talked out of it by friends or myself. How else will I stay connected? That is the biggest argument, and a rather valid one, but I feel that I am staying connected at the cost of my freedom. Freedom to choose. Freedom from addiction and wasted time. Freedom of privacy. Freedom not to “friend” (friend is NOT A VERB!) every passing acquaintance who wants to read what I am expressing to my real Friends.

Facebook is a waste of my time. I open it constantly to see if I have updates. It is the only on-line connection Kevin and I have during the day, as he cannot access hotmail or gmail. This is no excuse for us. We both have phones. And work emails. And what happens when I stay home: am I going to be tied to my computer all day long in case he emails? No. This cannot be a reason to stay on Facebook.

I already know that my children will not be allowed to be on Facebook, or whatever equivalent is around then. I don’t care what they say, not everyone is using it. They are not using it. Maybe Kevin doesn’t share my antipathy toward digital, but if he thinks annual Zoo Days away from school will hurt our kids’ educations, then he will side with me against the evils of Facebook distractions. I cannot monitor whom my kids will “friend” or who else will be watching them. The Internet is a tool. It can be used for good and for bad, and my kids will not get that, because kids don’t. They also will think they are missing out, the same as they will when I don’t let them watch whatever the cool shows are. When they are older, they will realize they don’t care about missing that year’s equivalent of Grey’s Anatomy, and they will perhaps be grateful that I spared them high school girls high on Internet disinhibition.

Not only do evils result as externalities to Facebook use, but the network itself does some pretty shady things, more and more openly so, just showing their contempt for the threat to unplug from their users. I feel like my privacy is threatened in a distinctly dystopian-like manner. For the love of Mark Zuckerber, other websites I go to know who I am because of my account. If I “like” (okay, real verb this time) anything on that site, Facebook posts it to my wall for my contacts to see and discuss. Facebook sells personal information. They make it intentionally hard to quit. That last one alone drives my desire to leave. It’s a freaking cult telling me I can leave any time that I want to, while their thugs block the door and refuse to let me call my parents. It’s dodgy. They’re pushers.

But.

My husband is on Facebook. This next part is going to sound paranoid and desperate, but I assure you that I am coming at this with no feelings of fear. One in five couples divorced in America in the last year cited Facebook in some way as the cause of the divorce. The combination of anonymity and rosy retrospection, not to mention photoshop, leads to indiscreet reconnections with exes, while disinhibition allows flirting that would never go on in person. I do not think that if I am not on Facebook Kevin will hook up with his exes or flirt with women who "like" his comments. I'm just saying, in real non-digital life, there are things that you don't do, not because they are wrong, but because they are stupid: they remove internal and external barriers, lower defenses and invite mistakes. Like drinking alone with a buddy of the opposite sex.

Other friends of mine are on Facebook, as well as my siblings. And like my husband, they are funny and interesting, and I don't want to miss out on what they are saying. I want to hear the updates and see the pictures they are posting. I want to know what happened to my high school friends and the teachers who inspired me. And Facebook is the tool to doing all of that.

But the problem is that Facebook doesn't feel like a tool. It feels like a trap.