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Photo by Alyssa L. Miller
I also said goodbye to the fat kid in my fourth grade class who got shot in the belly with a BB gun; my Uncle David’s dog Penny, and several dead friends who, even from the afterlife, continued to maintain their Facebook pages (What would Jesus do? Update his Facebook page, of course).
This was not my first attempt at quitting Facebook. How many times had I found myself traveling – on a bus in rural Guatemala, at a hostel with finicky internet, waiting in line to buy tacos al pastor from a street vendor in Mexico – only to realize that my mind was filled with the chatter of a thousand random Facebook status updates?
“Check out my amazing photo with Justin Bieber.”
“My dog has a urinary infection.”
“Jesus loves you! Read your daily Bible scripture.”
“I lost 15 pounds on a raw foods diet!”
“Hubby, I love you pumpkin! Looking forward to our super special date (and you know what)!!!!”
“In the Bahamas soaking up the rays!!! OMG…..Love my life!!!!!!!!! .”
I hated being only half present in my own life and always thinking about my next status update or boy-I-look-beautiful-and-happy photo opportunity. But at the same time I loved it, craved it, and needed that attention. I wanted to be known and loved by everyone. I feared that people would forget me entirely if I left Facebook. My love-hate relationship with Facebook caused me to spend inordinate amounts of time on Facebook some weeks and then quit entirely others.
Photo by S. Diddy
Even when I was traveling, my wanderlust-filled-heart was never really lost or immersed in a place. Instead, I spent my time broadcasting to my network of friends, hoping to find the familiar even as I yearned for a true disconnect and the giddiness of facing the unknown.
I was traveling – Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico – but my smiling avatar remained connected to hundreds of minor acquaintances and to the potential that I would meet one of these slightly known characters on my rambling Central American adventure.
Most recently I quit in an effort to finish my dissertation, and I vowed not to return until I was done. I went through an intense period of withdrawal, as if I were a drug addict in need of a fix. Even though I didn’t have a profile status to update, I would find myself in the kitchen making curry and mentally posting something to my Facebook wall about “making a tasty Thai basil curry.”
Only upon quitting did I begin to realize the extent to which Facebook had implanted itself in my mind and my life. I had grown accustomed to a flood of emails from Facebook, to my friends always knowing exactly where I was and what I was doing, to the mindless broadcasting of my thoughts and feelings.
After I quit Facebook, I spent weeks yearning for the day when I would join again and announce that my dissertation was finished. “220 glorious pages!” I would post on my status. I did finish my dissertation, but somewhere along the way, something changed. I began writing letters, remembering birthdays on my own, making homemade cards, and calling friends.
I relished a life free of the random agonizing moral dilemmas presented by Facebook including but not limited to: can I unfriend a dead person? Or will their family be upset? Or is a Facebook page for a dead person the modern way to pay homage to a loved one? Although I did suffer moments of intense sadness, I realized that while Facebook could provide an amazing quantity of interactions, it could never make them truly meaningful to me.
I did miss Junot Díaz, or at least I missed the idea that maybe he would notice my witty status updates and peg me as a writer. One afternoon I sat at home reading “Trading Stories” by Jhumpa Lahiri. She wrote, “How could I want to be a writer, to articulate what was within me, when I did not wish to be myself?”
And I began to cry, sobs wracking my body.
I knew that at heart, Facebook was about editing myself, presenting a perfect, beautiful person to the world while omitting all the dark, difficult bits, the poetics that, at their core, made me who I was. 
Alice Driver
Alice is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. She loves spending time in the streets collecting stories and eating potato chips covered in lime and salsa. She conducts research on issues related to the ethics of the representation of violence as a postdoctoral fellow at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and she is working on her first documentary about how photographers represent violence in Mexico. She is also a volunteer with the non-profit Justiciahable.org to promote issues related to human rights and justice. Find out more by visiting http://alicelaureldriver.com/.
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Very insightful. People are so busy living virtually that we’re forgetting how to live really. Unfortunately death is all too real and we will all have to face our unlived lives at that point.
#WhyDoYouFacebook?
Love this…..
Inspirational! Thank you for sharing your wounds.
Thank you for this inspirational piece! I, like you, have attempted to quit Facebook at one time or another, only to return with a vengeance a few days later. I mostly post photographs and music videos, but often I’d post about every little thing, with a new status update every few minutes.
I mostly use Facebook to connect with friends and family, but also with other people with whom I share common interests. I wonder what it would be like to quit for a month or 2… perhaps I’d be able to have much more photography, and more meaningful things, done… it would be a worthy experiment….
It’s a blessing to be able to track down one’s own feelings like this, and then face it.
Facebook is a total sham. People like Alice realized it one day, and quit. She called herself on it – “I’m being phoney.” As for smiling in photos, it’s only normal. Just like when someone at work asks you how your day is going – you usually say ‘fine, thanks.’ Otherwise we’d be bumming the shit out of people all the time. Facebook is different. It is a perpetual projection of bullshit, for those who live in this over-mediated world and believe in the messages it sends us. If facebook is ‘bigger than that’ it’s no matter – the people who use it aren’t. We could all stand to remove ourselves from these ‘outlets’ and just live a real life. Live in the moment and forget about posting it. So many people with iphones & the like have forgotten what that means. Use your voice and talk to someone in a truly valid conversation on the phone or skype. Go out into the world and be present without the hassle of trying to let everyone know what you’re up to. Seriously.
You are correct Jeremy. She looked in a social mirror and didn’t like the person she saw. I use Facebook to stay in touch with people who matter to me and to keep a timeline of my activity. I mostly post for myself. Things I want to remember, where I was when, stuff like that. I realized one day that that big number of “friends” were mostly people I didn’t really know, but that some were gems that I really did want to know the minutia of their day. Social networking is here to stay and life can be better with it. I can keep track of good friends and family in small bits of my day that before would have been just standing in line at the store. Louise C.K. says something to the effect that whining about technology is stupid, technology is amazing! It’s what you do with it that counts.
I had to laugh when I read your words “As for smiling in photos, it’s only normal”. It reminded me of a time I was in Russia and looking at the family photos of a Russian friend, and noticed that no one was smiling. I asked him why and he said, “Why would we be smiling unless we were happy? That would be phony”. Your “normal” is somebody else’s hypocrisy…. not really on point but something to consider in the discussion.