I am ambivalent about social media. I am a millennial and that means that I am part of the
generation that didn’t have cell phones when we were born, but have grown up alongside this
technology. I am conflicted because I am not sure that if one has truly “dropped out” of society
one should still have a presence on social media. Regardless, I am going to recount the history of
social media as it has progressed in usage, efficiency and variety by describing its presence in my
own life.
When I was around twelve years of age AOL invented instant messaging and introduced “the
chat room”. I remember there were many lewd dudes on that site. Regardless, it was a novelty
just like Artificial Intelligence is in 2024. It allowed me to communicate with others without
using a phone. It was so exciting to be able to “IM” my friends in the evening. However, despite
the fun of using IMs, phone usage was still the dominant form of communication. If I was going
to make a date with a friend, I used the phone. Beepers were pretty popular. I could beep my
boyfriend and he would call me back using a payphone. Pay phones were still functional in the
nineteen nineties.
At Yale as in other colleges there was email. I remember setting up meetings and friend-
dates through email as opposed to using the phone. There was a phone that was still linked by a
wire to the dorm room. I did have a cellphone but I didn’t use it like I do today. One’s email
was not connected to one’s cellphone and the pictures one could take with a phone were
rudimentary at best. When I was at college, there were cork boards all around campus and if one
had an open event such as a party or a meeting or play auditions one simply tacked up a piece of
paper on the cork boards inviting one’s fellow students to come to the shindig. A few years after
I graduated that mode of solicitation was defunct on campus and everything was done via social
media. What kind of social media?
Facebook.
I grew up with Jared Morgenstern and Peter Merelis. They both attended my primary school
and my high school. Both young men would become some of the first programmers of Facebook
when they went away to college and befriended Mark Zuckerberg or perhaps it is better to say
they went to work for Mark Zuckerberg as I’ve heard he isn’t the best at making friends. How
ironic! The founder of Facebook, the application which connects people and creates superficial
style friendships is not very good at making friends himself. Perhaps it is not an irony. Perhaps
Facebook was born out of a combination of Mark Zuckerberg’s loneliness and his amazing
computer programming powers. Anyway, there is life before Facebook and life after Facebook.
Originally I joined Facebook because it was how an acting class that I took in my twenties posted
notices, parties, auditions and events. I didn’t realize at the time that by joining I had just opened
Pandora’s Box. Immediately people were sending me “Friend Requests” and I soon had
hundreds of friends but I didn’t feel like there were more people who I could trust with my
confidence nor with whom I could even hang-out. I simply had more human beings in my life
and most of them were not people who I would have considered friends in the physical world.
Joining Facebook didn’t bring me more happiness nor more peace of mind nor a greater feeling
of connection with others. Quite to the contrary!
When I say I have dropped out of society I admit that I am still on social media. I feel like I
am talking about a drug when I say “I’m on social media.” Like “I’m on Adderall” or “I’m on
Prozac.” Anyway, how can I have withdrawn from society but still be on social media? I did quit
Facebook. I said “Good riddance!” I stayed off of it for eight years. For the most part I wrote my
first, early draft of this book during the period when I had dropped out of Facebook. However,
when I wanted to start sharing this book with other people I went back on Facebook to promote
it. Am I hypocrite? Perhaps.
When and why else do I use Facebook? When I am bored waiting for a doctor’s
appointment. However, even then I can get overwhelmed by all the gargantuan amount of intel
one encounters when scrolling through Facebook’s feed. I often wonder if it is worth the mental
angst that participating in this application often produces in me. My experience of Facebook is
akin to being in a virtual Disney World and everywhere I look there are distractions. I can burn-
out on Facebook just as easily as I can burn-out when I extrovert for too long a period in the real
world.
I consider the real world to be different than Facebook but is it? If I go scrolling down
Facebook lane, I find that most of the users believe that Facebook is part of the real world. I’m
the odd man – or rather, woman – out in believing that social media represents the virtual world
and that the virtual world is different from the real world. And this belief is the real reason I
don’t often scroll around Facebook looking at other people’s posts about their lives, their
opinions and their recipes for tuna fish salad. For every quality post on Facebook there are fifty
posts that I just don’t care about or that are even harmful, destructive or triggering to encounter.
Do I feel I have missed out by not being on Facebook for eight years? The answer? I do.
My friend died during Covid. His name was Nicholas Tucci, He was an actor and star of the cult
classic film Your Next. He died of cancer. He didn’t tell anyone that he had cancer. The notice
of his death and the invitation to the funeral were put on Facebook. Not being on Facebook, I
didn’t know he died. I didn’t know he was sick. Apparently, he didn’t tell anyone he was sick.
Regardless, I would have wanted to come to his funeral. In fact, when the presence of Covid
started to decline in 2021, I started to get in touch with people through email and through the
phone to make friend dates. One of my friends emailed back saying, “Isn’t it so sad about what
happened to Nick?” And I said? I didn’t say anything. I looked up information about his death
through the internet. He had died and I didn’t know about it. The worst part was that he had
reached out to me. He did so through Instagram which is another social media platform that I had
withdrawn from using. I never cancelled my Instagram account like I did for my Facebook
account, so he probably had been waiting for my reply. Yes, he could have simply called or
texted me but that’s not how the world works anymore. We instant message each other using
apps like Facebook and Instagram and what’s a person to do if she wants to connect to other
human beings? Use these applications? Indeed.
I have found certain groups on Facebook to be helpful. Presently, I am undergoing IVF (In-
Vitro Fertilization). It is a difficult process. It is made easier by sharing and relating to other
women who are on the same journey. The group is a wonderful resource and I’ve been
enormously helped by reading about the experiences of other women. The group’s name is “IVF
Fertility and Support Group”. I also belong to a group on Facebook entitled “IVF/IUI Single
Moms by Choice”.
As I am writing this chapter, one of the qualms I have with Facebook draws my attention.
Because I was checking in on the title of the fertility group of which I am a member, Facebook is
opened on my computer. I hear a ping and then receive a Facebook message “How are you, my
dear?” Sure. I can just ignore the messenger. Sure. I can just block him. Sure. I can go
through my list of one-thousand followers and discriminate between friends who I don’t mind if
they ask “How are you, my dear?” and those who are an unwanted distraction. However, to be
honest, it is all an unwanted distraction. Anyone who Facebook messages me during my work
hours is most likely not going to receive a response no matter how close or intimate a friend or
follower they are.
Why did I sign off on Facebook for eight years? It largely has to do with mental health. I
know I am not alone in finding that participating in social media can lead to a lack of mental and
emotional health. The various platforms show an idealized version of other people’s lives. I start
to feel bad about myself as I begin to compare myself to others. It is called, “comparing one’s
insides to another’s outside.” I am usually quite healthy in my relationship to others but an
application such as Facebook encourages negative comparison to one’s fellow human beings. It
increases my feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Moreover, I am pressured to check and
respond to notifications constantly. Facebook encourages a continuous checking-in and the
refreshing of one’s feed since new information is being uploaded every second of every day and
the inherent gimmick of all this new news is that one doesn’t want to miss out on crucial
information. I wish Facebook wasn’t the source of serious intelligence so I didn’t feel compelled
to check it often but then I think about missing Nick’s funeral and I realize it doesn’t matter what
I wish…
According to BlackLinko’s blog, as of October 2023, the number of people using social
media is close to five billion worldwide, with the average user accessing seven social media
platforms on a monthly basis. Popular platforms like Facebook have over sixty-eight percent of
their monthly users logging in to use social media daily. The average time spent on social media
daily is two hours and twenty-four minutes. What do all of these statistics mean to me? Social
media – and especially Facebook – is here to stay.
Regardless, I think it is beneficial to be aware of some of the negative side effects of
partaking in social media platforms. According to Vantage Fit’s Mental Wellness Blog, social
media can impact your mental well-being in the following ways:
Decrease your attention span
Detach you from the real world
Develop feelings of envy, jealousy, and loneliness
Create excessive fear of missing out or anxiety
Trigger feelings of inadequacy
Increase the risk of depression
Build addiction
Increase the risk of self-harm and suicidal thoughts
Increase feelings of self-absorption
Disrupt healthy sleep patterns
Social media as an addiction is a relatively new phenomenon but it has become more and
more common in recent years. The PEW Research Center survey of 2021 found that among
those who use social media, three out of ten use it constantly. What does constantly mean?
According to Exploding Topic’s blog, the average American checks their mobile device one
hundred and sixty times a day. What are they checking? I would guess that it is their various
feeds on social media.
Social media is an addictive entity because of the way such platforms are designed. These
platforms are created by tweaking their algorithms to make sure users are as engaged as possible.
Though not everyone on social media is addicted to it, it is not surprising that many develop the
symptoms of addiction over time and those prone to impulsive behavior, low self-esteem, or
those who have a history of mental health issues are especially vulnerable to it.
What does my present social media profile look like? If you are reading this book closely,
my lack of a social media presence probably comes as no surprise to you. Aside from checking
in with my IVF Fertility group regularly, I would say I scroll through Facebook and Instagram
about once every three to four weeks. The application that I log onto regularly is Quora. Quora
is a platform to ask questions, get useful answers, and share what you know with the world
meaning you can use Quora to find advice, ideas, perspectives, explanations, and answers to
questions you’ve always wondered about. Basically, people ask me questions and I write answers
based on my own experience. I have over a half a million viewers. I think it is possible to drop
out of society but stay connected to human beings using Quora because I am allowed to express
myself from the depth of myself which I can never do in Facebook or in Instagram.
Presently Facebook is the application which will tell me to when a friend or acquaintance
has a baby or gets married or dies. If I want to know which of my friends have just written a
book, it is essential that I check-in on Facebook regularly. However, is it worth the palpable
decline in mental health which occurs almost every time I log into the feed? If a special event is
happening to my friend I feel that they should contact me using the phone or email. I feel they
should call or write a letter to let me know they have had a baby. I don’t mind if its an
announcement that goes out to a massive email or mail list. And if a friend of mine is sick I don’t
want to hear about it by scrolling through a book of faces and finding the information in-between
Johnny’s photo of “the biggest piece of corn” and the proverbial recipe for tuna fish salad. Call
me shallow? Unfeeling? Cold? I’m anything but shallow, unfeeling or cold but rather I think it
is shallow, unfeeling and cold to have such a superficial mode of interaction be our dominant
form of communication.
I ask for the proof of our evolution. Is it in our constant need to deify our personality through
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tinder, Grindr, TikTok and the plethora of other
interfaces that ostensibly connect us to one another? One cannot even have a meal with a person
because his attention is being focused on his phone’s next ding as if he were Pavlov’s dog,
conditioned to jump at the ready when he hears his gadget’s bell. What is he salivating for? A new
piece of random nonsense to consume? Sadly, he is missing out on his actual meal and the
companionship of a real person instead of a device to which he is conditioned to respond. The
dictates of cyberworld are where we invest ourselves now, and the sacrifice is intimacy. The
prerequisite of intimacy is the choice to share Time with someone. The moment we share is both
in Time and beyond Time. It is an infinite moment etched in my heart and resonating there until –
who knows – maybe forever.
In actuality, my lunch-date’s I-phone has dinged him for this purpose: an alert.
Facebook Friend, Sally, is waiting for you to write on her wall.
No. This is not an evolved age. If anything, it is evidence of a dark one where a most shallow
representation of Self prevails and the depth of the eternal calling is, not only neglected, but
terrorized into silence. However, just because a coyote howls in an empty wood where no one has
the courage to go, does not mean that it does not howl. Its call is simply unheard and that is too
bad.
We are looking to an internet application to choose a sexual partner and tindering our next
sexual escapade, hoping to find satisfaction in an encounter that is the height of what is most
superficial about the sexual exchange and an activity that most people would be compelled to
admit, if questioned by the grand jury of the soul, is a sham of true intimacy. We are homesick for
ourselves, for our own souls. And yet, instead of seeking the truth inside of ourselves, we pretend
that applications like Tinder are our worthwhile replacements. There is more than the cardboard
we are force-feeding each other and all the while pretending we have found the ultimate,
delicious, gluten-free, bio-sustainable bread that tastes like chocolate without the sugar hangover.
How I personally feel about social media makes no difference: The phone is a vestigial
machine and defunct in its usage and I am living in a pipe dream. I am living in nostalgia. The
reality? Nick used social media to get in touch with me. My girlfriend used social media to tell
me that her second daughter was born. My friend used social media to let me know the date that
his book would be published. And the question put forth by my own devil’s advocate is as
follows: Doesn’t social media make it easier to stay in touch with other people? Perhaps that is
Facebook’s positive purpose: It makes it easy to stay in touch with other people. I may have
dropped out of society but I still want to honor my connection to other human beings and in order
to do so, it looks like I will need to use the tools at my fingertips.
Germany Kent is an American print and broadcast journalist. She gives the following advice
on how to use social media positively.
“Use social media for good and lift others up, not tear them down. Stay on the high
road. Keep your peace. Before you post online ask yourself two crucial questions:
Does my content add to the space; or, is it just clouding the feed?”
A proper end to any treatise on social media: Feel free to follow me on Facebook or
Instagram or Quora. I’m using social media because I want to connect with you and I want you
to be able to connect with me. It is time for me to “get with the program” but I promise you, the
second I allow social media to disrupt my peace of mind, I’m out. Until then, I promise to post
pretty pictures and to relay information about this book. I wouldn’t want you or any of my
friends and followers to miss anything that is beautiful or that I think might be worthy of their
time. In fact, you might make the discovery that this book exists because of your participation in
the virtual world. Who am I to judge? After all, I still believe myself to be a societal drop-out
and therefore I don’t rely on conventional morality to judge my own behavior nor do I rely on it
to judge the behavior of anyone else.
May you find joy and luck in your scrolling. May you discover interesting and fun facts in
the virtual world which make you feel good about yourself and the experiences you are having as
you journey onward through your one-time-only limited edition lifetime. How you want to spend
your time on this Earth is your own affair. However, if you are feeling ill at ease in the world,
please do try to unplug for a few minutes, days, weeks or years. I was able to write a book
highlighting mental health issues because I abstained from that which made me feel mentally
unhealthy. Please do feel free to wonder what you yourself might experience or accomplish if
you cancelled your Facebook account for one year or even if you simply refused to log into
Facebook for just one day. I wonder how you would spend two hours and twenty-four minutes of
time each day if not on social media? What new skills would you learn? What new hobbies
would you try? What new books might you read? What new recipes might you experiment with
in your kitchen? What new people might you meet? What new classes might you attend? What
friends might you see in physical reality for a cup of tea and a confiding hour or three? What
might you learn about another human being that you cannot learn through a social media
platform? I wonder and my hope is that you will wonder too.