I joined Facebook in late 2004. Since then, I accumulated over 800 Facebook friends, 30 photo albums and 100 groups. I grew to rely on it to connect and keep in touch with others. At one point, I thought I would be committing a sort of “social suicide” if I ever left Facebook.
Then, last summer, a friend’s response to a radical call afforded me the privilege of encountering (Facebook-less!) community living with authentically prayerful women. “Our soul waits for the Lord”, they prayed, citing Psalm 33. “Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.”
Moved, I became increasingly aware of my social reliance on Facebook, with its accompanying temporal trivialities. I was overwhelmed by messages, applications, and event invitations. I was tempted to compare myself with others, easily finding out about their lives without building meaningful relationships. I was suspicious that my private information was viewed, judged and used by third parties.
Eventually, I was challenged by C.S. Lewis: “Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.”
Finally, in September 2009, I permanently deleted my Facebook account. Since then I’ve discovered unreplied emails from dear friends – perhaps at the time I was too “busy” updating Facebook to send thoughtful responses. But friends still know how to reach me, and I now appreciate space for silence, and freedom from perceived social obligation.
To be fair, I remain connected to world news and to a half dozen friends through Twitter, a simplified micro-blogging tool. Will I ever rejoin Facebook? I don’t know. I have certainly not regretted reducing my Internet noise-level. And I am encouraged by many who strive to make room in their lives for the important things by “creating margin,” as TWU Nursing Professor Dr. Sonya Grypma describes it.
However, social media is constantly evolving. Facebook and MySpace pages are developing “Lite” versions of their sites. “Google Buzz” is a recent email-integrated development, receiving mixed reviews. FBML (Facebook Markup Language) now allows users to adjust settings on their pages, a feature that an excited Ivanka Trump tweeted about recently. The use of social media for the 2010 Olympics was recently analyzed on an online article via Mashable, “The Social Media Guide”.
This year, Pope Benedict XVI shared in a January 24th message on new media that “God’s loving care for all people in Christ must be expressed in the digital world not simply as an artifact from the past, or a learned theory, but as something concrete, present and engaging.”
Individuals, groups, businesses and non-profits can benefit from taking advantage of many opportunities to connect with others by engaging in, rather than withdrawing from, the current cultural modes of communication. A Google search on social media “mistakes” and “tips,” for example, can help the uninitiated to dip timid toes into the wide, virtual ocean.
We are reminded in Ecclesiastes, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Perhaps for some, it is time to learn to effectively utilize the knowledge, resources, and networking opportunities available through social media tools. For others, it may be time to reflect on and temporarily (or completely) relinquish things that we may think we “cannot live without.”
Try it.
