Facebook takes away ‘me’ time

By Connor De Bruler

I don’t want a Facebook account. 

I have one because it was a requirement for my psychology class in order to participate in online discussions. It’s a good tool for online chatting, but so is Web CT. I never had a Myspace account in high school, and I didn’t use instant messenger in middle school. I don’t like social networking Web sites, and I doubt people really need them.

Whenever I meet someone new, the last thing they ask me before I leave is whether or not I will send them a friend request on Facebook. Even though I technically use it for a class it doesn’t have my name, picture or personal information on it, so I simply tell them that I don’t have a Facebook. Their reaction is always one of confusion and dismay. It never gets old.

I’m against today’s culture of shameless self-promotion and I enjoy being a non-conformist.

I like to talk to people one-on-one if it’s possible, but I also enjoy the time I spend alone. I try to maintain an equilibrium between the two. Facebook muddles that equilibrium. When we are using it, we’re talking to our friends but we’re also alone. Spending our time chatting with others when we’re alone distracts us from focusing on our own personal well-being. 

Each of us need a certain amount of time during the day to really think about how we are doing, how we feel about things, and to just relax. Facebook also changes how we speak to people in person. Often times, one-on-one discussion are simply continuations of a midnight Facebook chat. Whatever happened to long, intimate conversations?

I started noticing the technological obsession my generation has early on. Watching my generation’s lives being eaten up by new technology was eerie to me. It seemed like I woke up one day to find that all my friends had cell phones and started speaking in acronyms. Everyone around me was drinking the Kool-Aid.

Of course, every generation has to cope with new inventions, but iPods and Myspace don’t serve a purpose aside from personal gratification. Everything is so instant and so easy. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before. The speed, however, in which we can retrieve it makes the information of less value, and now we take it for granted more than ever before.

I ask everyone at Winthrop University to stop using Facebook and other technological distractions for a week during spring break. Just think about yourself for a few minutes everyday and try to verbally communicate to other people. It’ll be fun. I promise.