After a long session on Facebook, mindlessly scrolling, stalking, clicking, liking, I’d often close my computer to find myself in a room that looked strange to me. For the period of time I’d been staring into my screen, I’d forgotten where I was. Then, within five minutes, I’ll find myself checking Facebook again on my phone.
This behavior is so shameful that I’m embarrassed to even be writing about it, but I’ve recently found some solace by removing Facebook from my phone. Like everything else in life, there is a time and a place for social media. If we never force ourselves out of its hypnosis, the consequences for the well-being of the world and for ourselves are dire.
Although the idealist in me says to just quit it altogether, my trials with this method have proven that there really is a lot to be missed on Facebook. More and more often, clubs, businesses and individuals are using Facebook events as their primary means of getting the word out about the goings on around town and on campus. In many cases, Facebook is even taking the place of texting as the primary mode of communication between friends. For college students, these uses of Facebook are particularly important.
However, just like work, relaxation, exercise and studying, social media needs to be limited to a part of your day. With Facebook on your phone, this section of your life spreads itself over everything you do, subtracting from all other aspects of your life. If you’re a chronic phone-checker, you know that as long as you’ve got your phone on your person, you cannot be fully involved in whatever situation you’re in IRL.
This isn’t a minor symptom of the social media age. Facebook’s intrusion into every area of our lives is a crisis that needs to be combated immediately. For one, Facebook puts forth a reality that corresponds only tangentially to what we experience. People are hidden behind profiles, and interests behind pages. And as Facebook fine-tunes its personalization, we become more and more isolated from the majority of the world that does not reside in our social circles. The wealth of information we find creates a dangerous illusion that we are connected with the rest of the world.
All of these problems won’t disappear when we limit our Facebook usage to one device. But it’s that moment of closing Facebook, of looking around and feeling as if we’ve been awoken from a strange dream, that breaks the illusion and allows us access to a genuine reality. Your phone is always with you, and if Facebook is on your phone, you’re never given a chance to come out from underneath its spell.
Facebook has brought us under its control in an enormous way. It’s engulfed so many functions that it has made itself a necessity in our lives. It sways us to give up more and more personal information in return for its service. It forced us to download Facebook Messenger onto our phones. The better it gets at imposing these changes subtly, the less we complain. It’s too late for us to quit Facebook, but we can regain some control by limiting how we use it.