Reflections on time poorly spent
I remember the first time I heard about Facebook; my older brother excitedly told me about it. At the time, Facebook was still only for college students. Six months later, I was the only kid in my high-school class without a Facebook account. Maybe I wasn’t the only one, but it sure seemed that way, even the kids without internet at home still had Facebook accounts.
I had a couple reasons for not joining the masses on Facebook. First, creating and maintaining a Facebook profile looked like a lot of work. I knew my activities were not cool enough to post on Facebook, so I would have to curate a false (or at least embellished) set of experiences which seemed exhausting. Photographing those staged moments and getting the images onto my computer for posting would be an extra annoyance. Facebook was a web-based product, and the original iPhone still hadn’t been invented.
Facebook seemed mostly like a meaningless waste of time. My high school English class had just finished reading 1984, but the idea that Facebook would ever have any sort of meaningful power had not occurred to me.
Second, I was struggling with depression. I hadn’t faced significant hardship or especially difficult circumstances, I just thought of myself as an unpopular loner. In hindsight, I was much more well-liked than I felt at the time. While it was immediately obvious to me that creating a Facebook profile would mean constructing an idealized version of myself so I could pretend everything was great, my teenage brain failed to grasp that all my peers’ online personas were also meticulously crafted. I stayed off Facebook to avoid being reminded constantly how great everyone else was doing.
Not being on Facebook was mostly fine, but there were a few odd occurrences. One day everyone in my English class wished a girl in my class happy birthday. Most of them didn’t know her well and obviously only knew it was her birthday because of Facebook. The whole class then loudly sang her happy birthday. This was not a particularly unusual event. The only unusual part is it was also my birthday; no one said anything, I didn’t tell them.
Later that day, I recounted the experience to a friend of mine on my high-school volleyball team. He preceded to tell everyone else on the team it was my birthday. During our game that day, my teammates loudly cheered for me from the bench every time I made a good play “Happy birthday” or “It’s his birthday.” I had my best game of the season. After that, my teammates decided that every day should be my birthday and repeatedly showered me with such cheers in games, practices, in the hallway, and even when greeting me years after high-school. People I didn’t know well mistakenly wished me happy birthday, and I had to awkwardly explain to them that it was not in fact my birthday. I received 50 times more birthday wishes than anyone else in my high-school, that most were not on my actual birthday was beside the point.
I went on to college, still without a Facebook account. Upon learning I was not on Facebook, people regularly asked me if I was raised by wolves (it was a more common expression in those days). But I persisted without Facebook well into my sophomore year. I finally caved, not because of peer pressure, and not because I thought it looked fun or would improve my social life. I signed up for Facebook for work; I was starting an internship in online marketing. The company assumed I, like else everyone my age, was an expert in Facebook. I figured, if I was going to be an expert, I should probably try out this product I had never used. So I finally created a Facebook account. It was initially exciting adding my friends, or waiting to see if they would add me. But the novelty wore off, and I quickly didn’t find it particularly interesting. Aside from looking at a few too many pictures of the girl I had a crush on, after a few months I hardly used Facebook at all.
Shortly after college, I was down to checking Facebook a couple times a year, until for the first time, I felt not being on Facebook risked me missing out on something meaningful. My friend was throwing a party and sent out the invitations on Facebook. The only reason I found out about the party is a few days beforehand, a mutual friend (who assumed I was going) told me she’d see me there; I had no idea what she was talking about. I was upset that being off Facebook caused me to be left out, although notably I wasn’t ultimately left out, and I did not miss the party.
I was determined not to miss out on similar social opportunities, so I decided to download the Facebook app on my phone. I changed the notification settings so I would only receive notifications when I was invited to events, or received friend requests or direct messages. Facebook was on my phone, solely so I did not miss these forms of direct social outreach. Yet, no matter how I tinkered with the settings, I seemed to always have a Facebook notification. A pattern emerged: I received a notification on my phone, I opened the Facebook app to check the notification, and then I got sucked in to aimless scrolling on Facebook. After a few weeks, I no longer needed the pretense of a notification. I had avoided the Facebook rabbit hole for nearly a decade, but I’d fallen in after only a few weeks on my phone.
I knew I was wasting too much time on Facebook, but the pattern persisted for several months until I finally deleted the app from my phone. After that, I checked my account on my computer for a bit, but my usage faded quickly: once a week became once a month, every month became every 3. A year or so later, I stopped checking Facebook altogether; another two years after that I deleted my account. I never got sucked into other social media like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or even YouTube (I am on LinkedIn).
Being off Facebook and other social media hasn’t caused me to miss parties or other social engagements (at least not that I know of). People ask me how I keep in touch with friends and family in faraway places – I call them. To my friends and family reading this, if it’s been too long since we last spoke, give me a call (same number); I’d love to hear from you.
About the author:
AJ Rice is the Founder & CEO of Privo Mobile.
