It has come to my attention through a number of encounters and conversations that there is a negative sentiment growing like a weed in the hearts and minds of collegiate uprights everywhere. At first it seems absurd. But I have heard through the grapevine something that goes far beyond anything I could ever imagine to conceive during my tenure in college. It is just this: Facebook is bad.
Let us back up a moment. Let me take you to Texas, a quaint little state I had the pleasure of visiting over Christmas break. While there, I met an intriguing young man with wide musical tastes and graphic design skills as impressive as my knowledge of Lord of the Rings trivia. After a lengthy conversation I mentioned that I'd find him on Facebook. Did I jump the gun? Assume too much? Apparently I did, because he responded, "Oh, I don't have a Facebook."
What? Who are you? Go back into the hole in the ground from whence you came! Who doesn't have a Facebook? But that's not what really shocked me. The true shock was the flippant irreverence for the line he spoke, as if his hipster juice were so strong that I should have smelled the non-Facebook vapors emanating from him the minute he walked into the room. Touché, I could hear him think. She thought I was a slave to social media, but unlike her, I have defied it! Now, let's examine this reasoning for a minute.
It is true that millions of students including us spend copious amounts of time on Facebook every day. Gotta' get a bowl, gotta' get serial updates about what everyone was doing between the hours of 2am and 8am, etc. The worst part is when people are on Facebook in class. It's an hour and fifteen minutes. You do not need to comment on your friends' dance pictures in the middle of Philo. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Welcome, therefore, to the end of the thought process.
People abuse Facebook all the time. Too many people treat it like alcohol, and binge to the point of making themselves sick. Except with Facebook, you don't get physically sick, but it is your grades/social life/relationship with your roommate that is infected by your inattention. This is wrong.
Facebook was created as a social networking site. As Aaron Sorkin spent too many millions of dollars informing us, it is the social network — singular, all-encompassing and substitutes need not apply. If you need to find someone in class to ask a question about a day you missed, you look them up on Facebook. If you want to tell your friends from high school that you're going to be in town, you post on their wall. If you want everyone to know how much cooler your weekend was than theirs, you change your profile picture to show it off.
When you accept friend requests you literally make them part of your network — which can help with business and beyond. This is a useful tool and is essential today. You need to have a presence on the Internet, a little corner where people can go to when they want to initiate communication but don't have the means to find you any other way. Facebook itself is not bad, wrong or evil. It is your inability to use it properly that has caused you such distress and, in the case of my Texan friend, distrust.
If you cannot pull yourself off Facebook for three hours, you are the problem, not Facebook. It's not making you look at it. It doesn't pop up in front of your paper and say "Check me, Please right now! Oh please, oh please!" No — you pull it up. You have to click on it, or enable it to receive chats. If you had the self-control to close the tab, to sign out or to move away from your computer completely, this wouldn't even be an issue.
It isn't a glory moment when you inform your friends that you're "off Facebook" or haven't ever had one. Someone who doesn't drink isn't morally superior to someone who drinks in healthy moderation. When you declare yourself free from the confines of Facebook, that's fine, but don't act like it's a demonic enterprise set to suck up your life and time.
Facebook allows you to message former teachers with new questions, post pictures for your family to see (your mom's got a Facebook, get over it) and post articles and videos on the walls of people who you think would enjoy them. Don't blame Facebook for your inability to leave it alone. Instead, use it for its benefits and have some self-control.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
Contact Stephanie DePrez at sdeprez@nd.edu
