At this point, Facebook’s updated layout is no longer news. If the update itself wasn’t obvious to you to begin with, you probably could have surmised that something had changed just by listening to your friends complain about it. This has become a highly routinized activity: Facebook rolls out some new change that somehow manages to make the site less functional, users promise to boycott the service, and then within a week people have completely forgotten what they were upset about to begin with.
“But this time it’s going to be different!” we tell ourselves. Some people like to say that they’re finally going to switch over completely to Google+, but I feel like that’s much akin to promising you’re going to move to Canada if your candidate of choice doesn’t win a presidential election; even if you actually did leave you wouldn’t have any friends there regardless.
Now personally, I have problems with calling out Facebook for “betraying” its users. First of all, Facebook, if you’ll remember, is a free service. The only people who have to pay to use it are the advertisers, and it’s because of their influence that most of these changes probably come about in the first place. Facebook has an active user base of over 750 million people; for advertisers, that’s a dream come true.
My second point of contention is that no one actively forces anyone to use Facebook. Just because it’s something that our generation has become so perennially associated with (much like smartphones, Harry Potter books, and unnecessary Final Destination sequels) doesn’t mean that one has to actively conform and continue to use it.
In fact, there was a period of time last year when I actually did stop using Facebook. I deactivated my account for the span of about two months, and aside from the fact that some of my friends thought I might have been dead for part of that time, I really enjoyed not having the thing for such an extended period of time.
True, it doesn’t eliminate a typical student’s insuppressible desire to procrastinate (that problem could likely only be solved by shutting down the internet entirely) but it does seriously reduce the amount of time that one feels obligated to spend on the Internet.
When using Facebook, I’ve noticed that I’ve become so desensitized to people’s wall posts and status updates that I can read a good two dozen updates on the news feed and not be able to remember a single one of them 30 seconds later. Let’s be honest: no one’s really posting anything profound on a social networking website, and if someone really had something important to say to you they’d probably tell you in person.
But of course I know the biggest reason for not wanting to give up the social networking site entirely: “Yeah, I might hate it,” you think to yourself, “but it’s just so convenient and I just don’t see how I could live without it.” If that’s what you think, let me promise you this: you’d be able to live without it just fine because before 2006 you were doing exactly that.
Yes, Facebook can be a highly useful social networking tool. It can be great for organizing events, getting in touch with old friends you otherwise might have no way of finding, keeping track of people’s birthdays, and sending out messages to people who are more likely to check their profile page than their e-mail address.
But I also think in some ways it’s robbing us of genuine human contact. Think about what “happy birthdays” have become. It’s so easy to just check your front page when you first log into the site, see who has a birthday that particular day, send them a prepackaged “HBD” message, and then just forget about it entirely.
Wouldn’t it mean so much more to actually call that person to check up on them and see how they’re doing? Or if you have no way if getting in touch with them by phone, you could at least write out a carefully thought out e-mail expressing how you’re genuinely glad that person exists and that they legitimately mean something to you rather than write them the exact same message about 200 other people are going to send them that same day.
It likely won’t be difficult to get used to Facebook’s latest changes; in fact, most of us probably already have by this point. But if you do find yourself legitimately upset about them, don’t just accept the service as a necessary evil in your life.
Try deactivating your account just for a little while; you can always reactivate it at any time, and you might find you’ll benefit more from the lack of constant novelty and stimulation.
