So I hear this all the time... "Facebook is such a waste of time", "Facebook promotes shallow relationships", "Facebook is a sad sign of the direction our relationships are headed", etc., etc.
So I am here to provide a counter to those arguments. I'm going to go with the "shallow relationships part first". So you spend an hour a day reading short little snippets from your friends' lives and get updated on what they're doing at all hours of the day. And you feel like you know a little bit about each person. It's like small talk with 30 people a day or so. So lets provide a scenario where you run into 1 friend that you interact with on Facebook and the next day you run into another friend who you haven't talked to in a week. So your conversation with your facebook friend goes like this... they say "wow, I'm so glad your baby is OK now! How are you doing? Are you emotionally exhausted?" And that leads into an in depth discussion of how your marriage has been affected, how you've been getting depressed as a result of it, etc., etc.". Then you run into another person who hasn't been keeping up on your life all week and you launch into a full explanation of the series of events surrounding your baby in the hospital. You talk about that for 1/2 an hour, then they update you on their life for 1/2 an hour... then you say bye because it's time to leave. You spend all your time updating each other and then you don't have time to go into your emotions about it all, how it's really affecting you... all the deep stuff in your life! You spend all your time together in the small talk that you got out of the way with your other friend during the week on Facebook.
So I propose that Facebook actually allows you to go DEEPER in your life with people, rather than keeping you at a shallow level as people regularly imply!
We all know that our lives our too busy, we all know we should be spending more time in relationships with people than we do, and we all feel like we don't have time for that. And then we blame Facebook as being part of the problem. I don't think Facebook is part of the problem... I think it is a RESULT of our problem. But I think it's more of a solution than a symptom.
I think Facebook stems from our desire to have deeper relationships, while being unable to find ways to slow down our busy lifestyle. We have found a way to cut to the chase in our face to face meetings in order to shorten the time we need to spend with people in order to have deeper relationships. If the result is the same (deeper, more fulfilling relationships) whether you spend a lot of time or a little bit of time with someone, then I don't think the road you take to get there is that important.
In addition to busyness, another problem in our lives is the sheer amount of people that we have intimate contact with throughout our existence due to our transportation and technology advances. If you grew up in the old West, the people in your town (the people you saw everyday) were the ones who were important to you (as well as your family that you left behind in a covered wagon but you don't have the ability to keep in touch with them),and that was it! You didn't have old college roommates who moved to France, or best friends from High School who are a 45 min. drive from you. Now, we have people all over the world that mean something to us and there is a strong pull to stay involved with people we love but there's also a resistance because it's too overwhelming. So is it really better to say "oh forget the old people" I'll just deepen the relationships with people I see right now?" I myself don't think so because there is value to those relationships too. So then there's Facebook... something that solves this problem. It allows us to keep in contact with people from our past that we care about, while simultaneously deepening the relationships with the people that are in our lives now who we see on a regular basis. Is there a downside to that?
So you say, “well you can always call those people to stay in touch and that’s better.” Can you honestly tell me that you remember to call everyone that you should every week? Do you call those 5 closest friends, plus 5 of your old friends, plus your cousins, plus your aunts and uncles, grandparents, parents, siblings, etc.? I talk to all those people once a week on Facebook. I could just email them, but I'm never going to think to do it. On Facebook I open it up and there are all my cousins online so I chat with them. And those are conversations with those people I would not otherwise be having! I think having conversations without "tone of voice" involved is better than having no conversations at all! Because now when I do see my cousins at Christmas, not only do we dive deeper quicker, we also feel like we know each other better so we are more open with one another and we trust one another more. I know what important things to ask them about (because I read it in their status update) and they are more willing to tell me about it because I talk to them more than just 4 times a year now! Our relationships have been completely transformed by this! Not to mention I've become better friends with their friends too now over Facebook, which bonds us into a tighter community, plus we share photos of our lives now, etc., etc. I am much closer to many of my family members ever since we signed on to Facebook.
The only downside I see is that we spend alot of our time that used to be "productive" on Facebook. But is that a real downside... what do you really value? OK, so that's a negative thing for our employers, I get that.I'm not saying it's OK to spend all your time at work on Facebook (that's like stealing from your company since your time is worth money to them). I'm just challenging all the people who call Facebook "a WASTE of time" to define the word "waste". Basically, you're nurturing deeper relationships rather than working more. Isn't that what we always say we should be doing? The only time you can call deepening relationships a waste is when you deem productivity as solely meaning financial gain or success or something like that. If you are getting to know people better, I think that is the opposite of "wasted time". Besides all of you who chastise people for "wasting their time on Facebook" probably waste your time in ways that are not at all related to building relationships right? So I think time spent on Facebook is much more valuable that many of the other things I could be doing right now!
OK so yes, there's a lot of stupid crap on Facebook that you can waste your time on, I myself have a virtual pet (so lame) and there's the quizzes, and the mafia wars, etc. There's also a lot of people you DON'T really care about or people who were unhealthy for you in the past. Well as far as the waste of time applications go, I propose that it's not the biggest sin ever to waste time! I think that comes from the rushed mentality we are trying to fight! I create my virtual pet's habitat when my brain is wore out and I need to sit back and chill for 15 minutes... I don't think that's a bad thing. I know people say, "why don't you go read". Whatever... you wouldn't go read either, you'd just check sports scores or watch youtube or something. As far as people you don't want to be friends with... don't be friends with them. When you push ignore, it doesn't send them a rejection letter. Or if you HAVE to accept them, just hide their updates or hide yourself from them when you're online so they don't chat with you... it's not that hard to avoid people you don't want to talk to.
I would say the only TRUE downside of Facebook is that too much of anything becomes a bad thing. Facebook relationships can supplement your normal relationships and that's a bad thing. However, I don't think that's a place that's as easy to get to as people think. Don't you go to work every day? Don't you see people on a pretty regular basis face to face whether you want to or not? There are some relationships that will become completely internet based, but those are the people from your past that you don't have time to keep up with now anyways and I think some contact with your loved ones is better than none. I think the scary time comes when you choose facebook OVER face-to-face contact. When you spend all night on it rather than hanging out with your spouse or kids, stuff like that. But isn't that how anything is? You can spend all weekend watching sports or reading rather than spending time with your family. Facebook is the same as anything else you enjoy, you have to choose when to use it and when not to.
So you still think Facebook is a bad idea and you’re set on just using the phone. For one, I'm sure that's how people felt when the phone first came out... but I think adopting that invention has improved our social lives. And two, if you actually do that, can you really tell me that those 5 people who are important to you enough to call, will actually answer when you call them? Probably not because they're too busy to talk on the phone. So even if you decide to live that way, good luck trying to convince others to do the same. It doesn't fit into our lifestyle. You're not going to get everyone you know to go along with you, so you can spend all your time fighting this and consider it a noble fight, but I propose that you'd be wasting a lot of good time more than actually accomplishing anything, and that is time that you could be spending utilizing the tools available to you (Facebook) to be developing those relationships rather than fighting the system! Sometimes going with the grain is not the worst thing in the world. You have to weigh the costs... develop my relationships by caving to the man (and to our busy lifestyle)? Or spend my time avoiding this out of principle and spend all my conversations catching up with my friends rather than probing deeper into their lives.
By the way, doesn't it annoy you when your grandparents refuse to use the internet for anything and you just want to send them an email? Or you know that they use all their days energy on just getting down to the post office to pay their bills so you just want to teach them to do it online to simplify their lives? Well, guess what... they didn't just get that way overnight. Somewhere along the line, they decided to fear new things so they only focused on the negative side of the new to give them an excuse to avoid braving the unknown. And you may, just MAY be on your way to becoming like that and your grandkids will be just as frustrated by how difficult you make it to for them to communicate with you (therefore hindering your relationship with them) just because you've decided that YOUR way of communication was better. It doesn't matter if it was better, if you don't adapt to change and progress with society somewhat, you will be left with neither the old way or the new way! Like if you don't communicate with your grandkids in the way the communicate, you might not communicate very much at all! Sometimes the old ways are better, but that doesn't mean that the new ways are all bad... usually the new ways are just solutions to other problems we've created in society (like excessive busyness) they are all interlocked and you can't just resist the solution while the problem still exists... that is not helpful or beneficial to anyone. (by the way, I'm very proud of my grandma for working so hard to figure out the computer AND she got on Facebook without any prodding or help from us...and she's found that she loves staying connected with people all day now that she's retired! It's been very good for her. Good job Grandma!)
So just from a personal perspective, I feel like Facebook has deepened the relationships with people I see face to face, opened up past relationships with people I care about (and I think connecting with your past is really important for personal growth), gotten me out of my "focused/time to accomplish something" mode and reminded me to invest into people more often, made me a more balanced person, and enabled me to keep the pace necessary for survival in America... while still having deep and meaningful relationships at the same time.
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