Facebook killed my social life

I try to limit the amount of time that I spend with people that 1. I can't stand or 2. can't stand me; why would I want to spend more time with them online? Truth is, I don't want to. Yet, I recently discovered that I'd been doing exactly that.

I was the type of high school student that looked forward to getting out of high school from the time I was say, a Sophomore. Maybe even a Freshman. I remember people telling me that high school was the best time in their life and they just wanted to go back to their high school years, and I thought they were surely crazy or lying to me in an effort to give me hope. I'm still not sure what they were talking about; it was a happy day when I moved away to college.

There were just under 40 students in my graduating class. I was friends with maybe 10 of them. Close friends with only 2. That's how it was, and that was fine. I wasn't planning on keeping in touch with my entire class, just the ones that I really cared about. But Facebook got big, and in the middle of my Freshman year of college, I caved and opened an account.

That's when it started. Friend requests from people I'd known in high school. My younger siblings' friends. The perceived need to “friend” everyone I met. I wasn't so concerned with the number of likes I had as I was that I might offend someone. I didn't want anyone to feel left out. I had the same problem in elementary school. Every year for Christmas when I made my gift list my mom would start me off with the question “Who do you play with at recess?” Well, I played with Becky and Helga and Mabel. And John. But Becky sometimes played with Katie and I didn't want her to feel bad because I didn't get her something. So Katie found her way on to my list. Eventually, by means of this complex network, I found myself getting gifts for more than half the class (none of whom were actually named Becky, Helga, Mabel, or John, by the way). Which is good practice for an elementary school student. But to continue this forever is practically impossible. Constantly compounding my acquaintances and trying to maintain connections with everyone I encounter isn't practical. Nor do I believe it's meaningful.

Before Facebook we latched onto those that we truly cared about instead of pretending to keep in touch with everyone. Really, we don't keep in touch; we share pictures of cats and other inanity (which is totally a word, by the way). Oh, what the heck. By that definition, everyone's in touch.

 

As I recently went through my clothes and other clutter to see what I could get rid of, I also stringently purged my Facebook friend list and found that the quality of my Facebook time increased greatly. I asked myself these questions: upon meeting, would we 1. recognize one another 2. be able to carry on a conversation and 3. enjoy/value the interaction? If not, why was I allowing them to hang around? And may I just say that announcing you are going through your friend list is the dumbest way to go about it? I found that it's just asking for all of those people that you were about to delete to crawl out of the corners of your life and persuade you that they actually care. The people you want to keep will not have to like a status or convince you in a comment why they are a valuable part of your life. Let's be real. There are people that care about you and that you love. You know who they are. Let them know who they are before they threaten to cut off contact. It may sound harsh, but those are your real friends.

You may be thinking these are the ramblings of an anti-socialite. Well, in first grade the “Reflections” contest prompt was “Wouldn't it be great if . . . ?” The winner for our class was “Wouldn't it be great if the world held hands?” with an adorable picture of the earth with abnormally large kids (they certainly weren't drawn to scale) surrounding it holding hands. It may have been out of necessity (due to my limited drawing abilities), but in contrast, my picture featured a simplistic house with an orange door and the title “Wouldn't it be great if nobody knocked on your door?” I did not win. (Translation: yes, I'm rambling and perhaps a bit anti-social.)