Monday, July 16, 2012

Facebook: I can't quit you, babe

this is me on Facebook
When I took my Facebook hiatus back in April, I realized pretty quickly how much time I was spending on it.  In fact, it was staggering how much "free" time I felt like I had when I didn't veg out in front of Facebook for a couple of hours each evening, plus quick checks on my phone and at work during the day.

It should have been easy for me to give it up, but as with the the siren call of simple carbs, I keep going back to Facebook.  Here's why:

1.  Better friendships

I know there are lots of detractors out there who say "conversing" via status updates and the occasional chat is not real friendship, and stalking reading other people's daily minutiae isn't building relationships either.  But those people are usually extroverts.  For my introvert self, who HATES talking on the phone, Facebook allows me to choose when I want to be social and outgoing.  As my geek hubby calls it, "asynchronous communication" rocks.

I've gotten back in touch with long lost high school friends, become better friends with folks from previous jobs or college who were just acquaintainces, and also get to keep tabs on my local friends a lot more often than I would now that everyone is so busy with life/kids/whatnot.  I might only see some of them once a month, but I have a pretty good idea of what's going on in their day to day lives if they use Facebook somewhat regularly.

2.  Educational value

I don't read the news online anymore because most of it is either depressing or inane, and lord knows we don't get an actual newspaper or watch TV news (because we no longer have TV).   But if something big happens, guaranteed I'll find out about it via my Facebook feed.  That's pretty sad, but it's kept me relatively well-informed.  If something grabs my attention, then I'll look it up online to read more.  Sometimes it's real news like a natural disaster, sometimes it's politics, which I mostly try to avoid, and of course I get my celebrity gossip this way too.  Quick and easy.

What's even better, though are the interesting links my friends tend to ferret out - TED talks, thought provoking editorials and blog posts.  I don't spend tons of time browsing the Internet on my own so this is a quick way to learn something new.

3.  The Mama Network

This is my favorite and the hardest for me to quit.  I have MANY mama friends on Facebook, and they are nothing short of amazing.   When T was born and I was having a hard time with breastfeeding, several friends reached out to me with support.  What was even more astonishing was that a few of them were people I hadn't seen since high school and we hadn't kept in touch.  It was a giant kumbayah moment, like I was being welcomed into the Mama Club.  As I sat in that rocker, gritting my teeth and nursing my babe through those first difficult weeks, it was so helpful to hear from these faraway friends.

It's still true.  When we have rough days, there are a lot of parents in my feed to commiserate.  Getting that kind of support on these busy days when I just want to veg out in my PJs and not actually *talk* to anyone, is priceless.



I'm sure most of this is due to my personality type, and the fact that after a day at work and/or a day with a chatty toddler, I am mostly done talking.  IM is fine, email is fine, but I just want to sit quietly.  But I still want to connect with people and catch up with friends, without having to dress up and go somewhere, or make small talk on the phone.

What I struggle with is how to keep these activities in a little timebound box so I'm not "stealing time" from the other things I want to do.  Setting a timer doesn't work for me - it just makes me belligerent.  So I'm still working that out and would love some suggestions from the Peanut Gallery out there :)

What about you? Do you love Facebook?  Hate it?  Both?

13 comments:

  1. It's very much the same for me. I really like seeing what my friends are interested in and up to, and it's a lot easier to check for a few minutes here and there versus calling someone and talking for an hour. (Also, don't like talking on the phone much...)

    Friends also make the best news/interesting stuff filters! :-)

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  2. I'm not on facebook. #2 is, and will occasionally update me with whatever new strained pea the baby of one of our friends from high school's kid is now eating. I could live without that.

    It does irritate me when nobody mentions that people have gotten married or had a new baby because I would know if I were on facebook and why am I not on facebook. I miss the days of getting an email about such things.

    Mainly I'm not on facebook because I probably wouldn't get any work done if I were.

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    1. Hush's comment below makes a good point, though. If you're close enough, they'll email or call you anyway. If not, maybe that's a good filter for life :D

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    2. It's more complicated than that since my personal and professional lives intermingle given the circles I travel in (and was educated in). It's a very small world and people just assume you know.

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  3. the new timeline effectively curtailed my facebook time-suck habit (I hate it) combined with whatever algorithm they use to decide whose posts you see (i can't be bothered with individual settings etc). However I still log on for the very reasons you share, to catch up with friends who are far away, because phoning is pretty much reserved for my parents these days, and because the remnants of my other online lives are still on facebook (i no longer participate in parenting boards that I started while pg). Oddly enough my major news source this year, while i wasn't commuting and listening to NPR, has been twitter.

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    1. Interesting. I have never gotten into Twitter - it just seems overwhelming somehow. Maybe I just haven't refined my Twitter following to see the right stuff...

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  4. I agree with all your points actually! Also I have my whole extended (and international) family as fb friends (cousins, cousin's full-grown kids), and they LOVE seeing pics of my babies & I love seeing what they're up to. I wouldn't dream of calling any of them on the phone so if it weren't for facebook, we'd be strangers. We all met up at a family wedding last weekend and I felt so much closer to everyone, knowing what they were up to & looked like, even though I hadn't seen some of them in 5-10 years. I glance at fb on my phone, so I don't see the whole "timeline" stuff, and I do it approximately once a day, usually while I nurse baby to sleep, so I don't think its a huge "time suck". Now reading/commenting on blogs...that's my time suck!

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    1. Hah, well thanks for the comment here :) I do limit my regular blog reading to a handful of blogs, and then have a giant list in my Google Reader for when I have some time to kill (like waiting somewhere).

      I do love that FB lets me keep in better touch with people I see only occasionally. That rocks.

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  5. Not too surprisingly I love FB. But I don't get myself addicted to it. I, like you, love that I"ve reconnected with friends from my past. And have become better friends more quickly with new friends. I think it's a good medium, but it can be taken too far. I think a lot of the "younger" generation needs to realize that FB is not always truthful and that real life happens outside of FB.

    I'm glad your back on FB though.I missed you.

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  6. I've never been on FB and for me personally, I'm just not seeing the value-add. Almost every time someone finds out I'm not on FB, they say something to the effect of "Wow, you must have a ton of free time!" And I think "Holy hell, that must mean you are voluntarily pissing away all of your time and you're not even being PAID to do it."

    One thing I do enjoy about the existence of FB in the world is that I can tell right away who really gives a damn about me because they'll make sure to tell me FB-gleaned things and invite me to things only people on FB are in the loop about.

    Living in a small town makes FB extremely unappealing. Everyone already knows everyone's business. I'd have to constantly be turning down friend requests and dealing with local drama. No thanks.

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    1. Yeah, the time suck is pretty astounding. I think if I spent half my FB time exercising I'd probably be skinny :P

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  7. What I hate about Facebook, and I think I wrote a rant on this, is that many of my friends stop emailing me and keep pressuring me to go on Facebook. I used to get and send long emails that are just more personal than Fb. Sigh..

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    1. Yeah, there's definitely been a drop off in nice long emails, which is sad. But I'm not writing as many myself, just due to sheer time constraints. So Facebook helps to bridge that gap a little for me, which helps more than hurts.

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