Let's Facebook It!

 I have recently discovered that many of my friends have opted to leave Facebook altogether.  Whilst initially astounded at this (I mean, it's quite a handy communication tool and not all that bad, really), I have to say that I am becoming more and more sympathetic to their reasoning.  I have found myself thinking of more and more things that I don't like about being on there.  Admittedly, I am one of those people who use the site most days, usually to repost an article or to update my status.  I have often wondered whether I have become one of those frequent Facebookers who annoy other people simply because I post so much that I am actually needlessly filling up other people's newsfeeds.  I don't know what prompted me to do this but I decided to sit down, have a serious think about my Facebook use and note down the main things that I have come to dislike about using the site.  I must point out that this is only my personal opinion and is in no way representative of other users.

1. It gives a false impression of popularity

Remember when we all first signed upto Facebook and were keen to "collect" friends, even friends who we may have only met once or twice?  Aaaah, me too.  Whilst this was initially a fun way of keeping in touch with people like Mike the intern or Jessica who is the friend of a friend's cousin whom you once met at a party, this game soon got boring.  Why?  Because you also found that you were getting friend requests from people who you either barely knew or wish you'd never met, such as the guy with whom you'd had an awkward snog in year eight.  I am coming around to the belief that there are some people with whom we are only supposed to have a passing and polite acquaintance (clients, for example) and nothing more.  Yet, with the advent of Facebook we were all suddenly supposed to become besties.  Before we know it, we have 748 "friends," many of whom we probably wouldn't say hello to if we saw them in the street.  Furthermore, we are sharing our most treasured moments and lowest thoughts with these people, who probably don't even care. Out of these 748 "friends," there are probably only about four people who we could genuinely count as friends.

2. It makes us socially competitive

OK, so most of us have moved on from the whole friend collecting game. That got boring when we realised the home truths that I spelt out in point one. However, this by no means that the competition's over. We are now competing over who has the best life. Don't pretend you don't have a sneak peek through profiles of exes/ school acquaintances “just to see what they are up to these days” and then get all downbeat when you realise that they are travelling the world/ sitting on the exec board of a major blue chip company/ starting their own school for impoverished school children in Mozambique, whilst you are stuck in your “dead end” job and your rancid rented flat. The thing is that you actually enjoy your job and you love your flat. Or you did until you logged into Facebook and found out that the numpty who made your life hell at school is living the life of Riley. Sometimes there is simply no justice in this world. There, I've hit the nail on the head for you. You are usually happy with your lot until you start comparing it to that of others.

The main problem here is the saturation of information. We can only really compare things if we know what we are comparing, which means that we would need to find out about somebody else's life in order to compare it with ours. Prior to Facebook, we would have either come by this information if we had spoken to the person in question or if we had had it passed to us via somebody else in the know. Now that we have Facebook, we don't have to rely on this information being passed to us simply by chance. Now we can snoop when we most feel inclined to do so and that can often be when we are bored or at a low ebb anyway. It goes without saying that this can lead us to become rather miserable and more prone to just fixating on what other people have rather than on what we want to achieve in our own lives. It's a slippery slope down, folks.

3. People only post what they want us to know

This is closely related to point number two. When we are truly fixating on the reasons why one of our “friends” has it all whilst we are really struggling, we fail to take into account the fact that we are not seeing a true representation of that person's life. I'm not saying that it is all pure fantasy, although there are some people who probably do fabricate their entire lives on Facebook. What I am saying though, is that people manage their online persona in the way that many of us try to manage our offline image. Users will post the statuses, photos and videos that they feel best represent the person that they want to be rather than the person that they actually are. That person who seems to always be down the pub having a whale of a time with friends whilst you're sitting at home watching Gogglebox and eating the remains of last night's pizza is probably no more of a social butterfly than you are. Those photos were probably taken over the previous weekend, you know, the weekend where you were also out having a few bevvies with your friends.

Conversely, you will very seldom find a person that wants to broadcast the breakdown of their relationship or their forthcoming disciplinary proceedings on Facebook. Oh, I know that some people do. But generally most people don't. Things go badly for all of us at some point but most of us prefer to only focus on the positive and amusing stuff, which can give the impression that we are all super happy and amazingly successful all of the time.

4. It kicks off rows in the real world

This has never happened to me personally but I have heard of it happening. There isn't much of a need to elaborate much more with this one. Suffice it to say, that it is really easy to just type a thoughtless comment and even easier for that comment to be misconstrued (or understood perfectly, as the case may be).

5. It negates the need for effort

Hands up, who has assumed that, just because they have sent somebody a message on or via Facebook that this is enough? I know that I have fallen into this trap before and I am now beginning to truly count the cost of this assumption. Why? Because I suspect that the same is being done to me. The difficult thing is that it is not personal and nor is it wilful. The person means well. They are busy but at least they are still finding time to like and comment on your grumpy cat memes. In some ways, the whole concept of Facebook cheapens friendship to a few soundbites and likes.

Here's the thing. As entertaining as your memes and statuses are, they are no substitute for taking an afternoon of your free time and just spending it talking to somebody who you actually care about and want to talk to. To coin my mother's saying “you only get out what you put in” and if all you put in is a generic “look at me” every so often, then maybe that's all you deserve back.

6. It has become a barometer of our self worth
   Again, this one is pretty much self explanatory and risks repeating the previous points but it is still an important point in its own right. Intellectually, we know that we are worth more than a mere Facebook page, which doesn't even have a physical manifestation. However, if you spend too much time on there as I have been guilty of doing, then you can begin to see it as some sort of reflection on you. The lack of responses to posts can become something of a suggestion that you yourself are not an interesting, worthwhile individual. Facebook can be something of a virtual school yard in this respect. Whilst doing research for this post I can across a problem page by a woman who was becoming depressed because very few people responded to anything she posted. Naturally, some participants told her to grow up and get a life outside of Facebook, which seemed harsh and easier said than done. It also made me question whether Facebook was the problem in this case. Maybe, just maybe, this woman already suffers from very low self esteem and her Facebook usage is her way of trying to overcome this by galvanising positive attention. If this is what is going on in this case then maybe the problem isn't Facebook but the user's expectations.
   
   
    By this logic, it would seem that it is not Facebook that is the problem but the way that some of us choose to use it and the importance that we place upon it. I can't tell you why people are choosing to delete their profiles. No doubt there are a whole swathe of studies that can tell you why different types of people have decided to switch off and either move to a different social network or abandon the whole concept of social media altogether. What I will say is this; the problem is not Facebook. The problem is with the individual and how they use it. It can only really reflect life. If you do not feel contented in your life offline, the chances are that Facebook will not make you happy or fulfilled either. It exists as a social network to help you to maintain contact. It will not reconcile you to people from your past who you dislike; it will not make you a better friend and it certainly won't give you better social skills. We need to stop trying to use things as quick fixes and substitutes for taking real and positive action. Whilst you won't necessarily need to delete your profile to achieve this, it might be an idea to limit the amount of time and energy you spend on there if you do feel that using it is having a negative impact on your life.

Drinking Out Loud!

 Well, that's January done and dusted-or, as it has come to be known within some orders of British society, Dry January. For those of you not in the know, Dry January is an initiative that has been thought up to make us re-evaluate our relationship with alcohol by challenging us to give up the stuff for an entire month. Presumably, the hope is that if we manage to make it through to February without touching a drop of alcohol, we will realise that we don't need it to have a good time and will be much more inclined to drink in moderation in future. This may sound like it should be a fairly obvious and somewhat common way of thinking but let me tell you, it appears to be much less obvious and common than you would want to think.

As someone who has a very low tolerance for alcohol and by that I mean that it only takes a tiny amount of the stuff to make me ill, I am fed up of constantly having to justify my lack of indulgence to other people. I get that people are trying to make sure that I have a good time by insisting that I drink as much as them. I also understand that some of the best stories involve alcohol fuelled debauchery and that if you do not drink much you can be perceived as something of a geek. Look, I grew up in a provincial northern town where there was little more to do than drink, take drugs and have sex but I still resent the notion that it is not possible to have a good time without drinking enough to cause you to barf up your entire digestive system. I have battled against this assumption ever since I was old enough to go go out drinking and it is getting a little bit annoying. Like many other moderate drinkers, I feel resentful of the constant need to explain why my orange juice doesn't contain vodka or why I'm nipping off home early. Why must non-drinkers always have to state “not for me because I'm driving/ on medication/ tired/ working the next day” as though drinking to excess is somehow part of your day job that you're trying to shirk. By rights, we should just be able to say “no thanks” or “an orange juice for me please” without feeling the need to justify our choices all of the time. Come on guys, non-drinkers and moderate drinkers can be a laugh too (isn't it sad that I feel the need to point this out!), you don't have to constantly badger us to keep up pace with you if we can't/ don't want to. You must also stop assuming that we are not having fun just because we happen to be more sober than the rest of you. The chances are, we are sitting back and enjoying your garbled conversations and sordid confessions much more than you are. We will also enjoy repeating these back to you whilst showing you the grainy footage of your drunken antics whilst you're vomiting up your digestive system the following morning.

Suffice it to say that I didn't participate in Dry January because I didn't really see the point. I don't think that my relationship with alcohol needs re-evaluating. I do, however, think I need to learn how to upload video footage onto the likes of YouTube because this might just MIGHT persuade some of my clan to re-evaluate their relationship with alcohol.