why i quit facebook.

{photo by Jenna Alcala for Matchbook Magazine}

Last week I needed the email address of a friend, and I went to the only source I knew wouldn’t fail me: Facebook. (Sad, isn’t it?)

I logged on to my husband’s account and found myself falling into the same patterns I had developed months ago when I chose to delete my own Facebook account. I grabbed my friend’s email address, yes, but I also meandered through long-lost acquaintances’ photos. I scrolled through a day’s worth of random updates — so and so bought a house, so and so had a baby, so and so had Subway for lunch — and noticed the multitudes of people who waste away their hours purchasing fake farms and indulging in rather bizarre mafia wars.

As the minutes passed, I felt those familiar feelings of frustration, resentment, irritation, and jealousy bubbling up inside.

It’s difficult to admit publically that something as insignificant as a social networking site brings out the absolute worst in me.

But it’s true.

And that’s why, after offering up my Facebook time as a Lenten sacrifice for a couple of years, I chose to give up Facebook completely this past March.

I don’t regret it, not even a little bit.

Sure, I know Facebook can be a useful tool. You can share photos, keep in touch with long-distance family and friends, schedule events, and share funny videos and favorite articles.

But after months without it, I’ve begun to think that Facebook actually does a lot more harm to relationships than it does good. With news about babies and houses and jobs and marital statuses, social networking can create a false sense of intimacy and lead to pretty lazy communicating. You don’t have to carry on full conversations anymore: Instead, you can click a thumbs-up signifying just how much you “like” the fact that the guy who sat next to you in college English class got a new job.

Quitting Facebook hasn’t made me call people more, nor has it inspired me to answer all of my emails in a timely manner. But I have noticed that I can genuinely ask people how they’re doing and not already know their answer based on their hourly updates. I have more time to write notes and cook meals and send emails. I no longer am curious about what my high school classmates are up to, nor do I spend hours wondering why I wasn’t invited to a party I never would have wanted to be invited to in the first place.

I know these feelings are my own fault. I know that Facebook isn’t evil and that there are plenty of other mediums that can be just as detrimental to human relationships.

But for me, Facebook was by far the worst.

Through blogging, I’ve met creative, spiritual people who inspire me and uplift me (and if I ever find myself becoming jealous or frustrated while reading a blog, I delete it from my Google Reader, simple as that). Many of us have formed true friendship and relationship. Blogging helps me stay in-tune to the ideas of others, and it inspires me to be better.

Facebook wasn’t doing any of that.

Facebook became frustrating and draining and impersonal. Perhaps I could have solved the problem by doing a purge of my hundreds of Facebook “friends.” Maybe by setting a limit on who I friended and why would have helped.

Instead, I chose to deactivate my account.

Sometimes, I miss it. I miss seeing the baby pictures and keeping in touch with friends from college.

But the benefits far outweigh the things I miss.

I no longer worry about who invited who to dinner, nor do I have to read the exhausting wall-to-wall exchanges created by individuals who refuse to pick up the phone. I don’t spend endless hours speculating on who’s dating who or what someone’s cryptic, passive-aggressive status means. I no longer compare my life to the lives of long-lost acquaintances who can somehow afford European vacations and houses with marble countertops.

Life and friendship and relationship are hard enough without throwing impersonal communication and unrealistic expectations into the mix.

I’ll admit: Those first few weeks without Facebook were rough. I felt kind of left out, like an outsider looking in.

But now?

Ignorance is bliss.

My in-person friendships have grown and developed, and I discovered that my life is already full without trying to cram it with more-distant-but-falsely-intimate relationships.

And guess what?

People still, somehow, get a hold of me if they need me. They call, or comment on this blog, or text, or email. I think we’ve lied to ourselves, thinking that we can’t get off of Facebook, because then we won’t have anymore friends, and no one will ever make plans with us again.

It’s simply not true. (And what kind of life would we be leading if it were?)

Sometimes I find myself confused in conversation because the girls in book club are talking about something one of them posted on Facebook. But they quickly catch me up, and all is well. I survive.

My life did not end when I quit Facebook. Instead, I think it got better. At the very least, that simple act of quitting has helped me to become better.

And that’s enough reason for me to stay off for a very long time.

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P.S. -- I found another really good blog post on quitting Facebook here. I think she puts it perfectly.