Almost 2 years ago, or maybe even before that, I started a Facebook account because everyone I knew was talking about it! I felt the need to check it out, see what all the fuss is about! In less than a month I had added and accepted around 200 “friends” and within a period of 3 months or so, my “friends” multiplied to 960 or so!
Now, since I had an already established blog which I used daily to publish my writings, and since this blog required a lot of time and attention and I didn’t have those, I didn’t mind the many “friends” and kept them there just to allow more people to view my writings and maybe even become regular readers.
After a while, I noticed that some people started adding me based on the profile picture I had placed and that in fact, they really had no interest in who I am or what I write about!
I started blocking people, deleting others and adding many to my limited profile list. You can imagine how some of those complained, others got upset and simply stopped contacting me!
Yet, I still was on Facebook… It helped me stay connected to real friends who lived in different countries.. It also helped me keep track of birthdays that I never seem to remember!
Then Facebook designers decided to change their interface! I hated it! I complained about it through my status feeds, I might have even written about it! All I wanted to do at that point was to deactivate my account but I couldn’t get myself to do so… I felt trapped: I needed to stay in touch with all those people and I needed my readers to keep track of my writings with the least effort possible but I didn’t want this interface!
Just recently, I suffered the same dilemma when Facebook designers decided to change the interface yet another time!
I feel caged!
If we think about it consciously, there may be a lot of factors that we are not very aware of that are able to “trap” us into never leaving this trap of social networking, and one main ones is peer pressure and the need to be in a crowd, a part of a group: the need to belong!
Nowadays, I hear people being shocked if they hear that “x” has no Facebook account! To them, it is natural to have it and abnormal to refuse to be sucked in to the chain of exposing your private life online and sharing it with everyone…
And now we come to the end of my story and the question remains: Will I ever be able to free myself from the Facebook chains?
I wonder… .
