“I don’t have a Facebook.”
I’ve had to say that every few days for the last few months. It’s been met with every response from “Are you crazy?” to “You’re my hero.” Love me or hate me, everyone eventually asks why. Facebook has become such an integral part of college culture that it’s hard to imagine what student life would be like without it. Since the end of August, I’ve stopped wondering and I now know exactly what life is like sans Facebook. And it’s not all that bad.
When friends ask why I don’t have a Facebook, I usually tell them I hate it. That’s not true. I don’t hate Facebook. In fact, I miss it sometimes—especially on weekends when I’m sitting in my room, bored because I have no idea what’s happening around campus. Setting up a Facebook page is a great way to spread word about an event and easily invite 200 or so of your closest friends.
Facebook also makes it easier to stay in touch with friends from home, family members, casual associates, that kid you sat next to in eighth grade, etc., whose phone numbers or e-mail addresses you might not otherwise have access to. It’s also a way to maintain and chronicle relations throughout college—I now find myself occasionally forgetting what I did on the weekends without photo albums to remind me how drunk we all got that one time.
These are all useful aspects of Facebook—but none of them are really necessary. While a lot of these features make it convenient and easy to stay loosely connected to people, since deleting my Facebook I’ve found these associations are more detrimental than beneficial. For example, ending up at (or worse, throwing) a party full of random people is a serious drawback of the mass e-vite—but since I deleted my Facebook, I haven’t found myself at a party where I didn’t really know anyone, since I’m stuck only going to parties that I’ve been personally invited to.
The clusters of event invitations in a Facebook inbox can also make weekend plans hard to peruse. The Georgetown community would benefit far more from a calendar of events that administrators and heads of student groups could edit, to indicate campus events more clearly and comprehensively.
E-mail and phone conversations may take more effort, in terms of staying in touch with friends from home, but it’s definitely possible. It’s not like people throughout preceding generations lost friends only because they lacked Facebook. Sure, there are people I’ve lost touch with, but if a relationship is really worth preserving over a long distance, it stands to reason that I should be able to put in that extra time. The pictures and the memories still exist, even if no one else can see them.
I originally deleted my Facebook just to show that I wasn’t afraid to—to prove that it’s not a necessary part of a college social life or interpersonal relationships in general. But it was the unforeseen side effects that have kept me off Facebook servers these past few months.
The first sign that this was a good life decision? I missed it. Facebook is fun. In fact, it might even be too much fun. It’s a great way to waste time on the computer, especially with all the applications and games it now offers. Even on days where I wouldn’t go on as much, I knew I always had the option of surfing Facebook when I was really bored. I’ve had to come up with other ways to exercise that boredom, like spending time with my friends or doing homework. This has been more beneficial to both my social and academic lives than Facebook ever was—in fact, a study published by Time magazine last April showed that students who use Facebook have significantly lower GPAs than those who don’t.
The other benefit has been my social liberation. I don’t have to worry about presenting myself to my peers through a web page. I can express myself on my own terms. I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to look like in these pictures or who’s going to see them—and I definitely don’t have to worry about an unwelcome intrusion of privacy from a parent or prospective employer. I encourage everyone to give “old-fashioned” living a try. Your friendships may not number quite so highly, but those you do have will be far more worthwhile.
