A few months ago I quit Facebook and, rather than unsubcribing, I permanently deleted my account.
As a result, I have never felt happier and more free in my life.
I do not have to read about what others are getting up to in their life, or how so-and-so is having a birthday party, or having to view those horrible, and after a while, depressing meme's.
I was reading and seeing information that did not matter very much to me.
It all got too much and I felt mentally tired as a result of Facebook.
You may be thinking why did I not just take a break from the site.
That would be a good idea if I did not start to feel the same again after a while.
I recognised a deeper problem.
They often say that technology keeps us apart. A statement I believe is true to a certain extent.
Facebook, they tell us, is here to help us better connect.
The trouble is,though, Facebook does not do that, and instead what it does is:sticks us in one big room, straps a chain around us and tys us up to a post - all the while our cruel overlords write down our ever action, our every word - a database of information, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.
We are not treated as humans on Facebook, but as test subjects.
We are mice in a lab experiment.
They give us this virtual world, packed with many great features and oppertunities, seemingly free of charge.
And while we make use of this service, we naively believe it is beneficial to us and does not cost a thing.
Facebook may not cost money to use but that is only because they benefit more from us using their site than we do.
Sadly, though, the information that they are collecting about us may prove detrimental.
After all, Facebook does keeps an alarmingly accurate account of our every action.
Facebook is a like a window in to our life.
The trouble is, sometimes we do not know who is looking through it. It could be a potential friend or future partner.
Whoever they are, they can find out all our little secrets or come across a status update that was only a knee jerk reaction, a spur of the moement thing - though how would they know?- and start to form an opinion of you based on us using a back catalog of status updates that derived from a possible three states: happy, sad, or angry.
This unnatual ability to view everything a person has said is harming us because something that you believed 2 weeks ago you might not believe today.
And if a person reads that status from 2 weeks ago then they might think you still believe that.
Relationships cannot be built on status updates
Status' that reflect, in truth, a temporary view will be set in stone forever.
A vast majority of status' will try and fool you in to thinking that the person's life is perfect.
I often think that people who do this do not in fact have this life they are claiming to have.
I can understand, though, Facebook is a showcase of your virtual self: a webpage; dedicated just to you; for everyone to see, and you try to make it the best you can.
The trouble is, life is not always perfect and you are not always going to have the best of days and somedays you will feel down in the dumps, but if you pretend to the world that your life is a fairytale then all you are doing is lying to yourself and other people.
A facebook page, the millions that exist, are but concrete bricks; bricks that form a wall; a wall around each of us; that must be knocked down so that people can reunite and rediscover that art of communication through speech, or understanding what another person is feeling by looking at the expression on their face.
Because at the momenet, all we have to go own is black and white text that offers us no indication of what kind of mood or situation that person is in.
I am confident, though, that Facebook will fall, like Bebo and MySpace before it, and that everyone will move on and hopefully get back to normal before it is too late by ridding themselves of this horrible plague that vows to turn them into emotionless, cynical, and remorseless individuals.
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