Hi guys!
Today I wanted to do a rambly post about FaceBook. It's a social media platform that has taken the world by storm, and I can't think of many people running in my circles that don't have their lives displayed on a 'timeline' for everyone to see. This week I did something I've been considering for a while now, and I hit that delete button, which may seem like a small feat to some of you, but to anyone (especially in their teenage years) like me, this is actually a pretty big deal. I'm not saying I'm addicted, I'm actually far from it, but to remove yourself from a world in which so many of your peers submerge themselves in can lead to some pretty interesting changes.
I won't go into the reasons why I deleted my profile - mainly because it was nothing dramatic and wasn't the result of one specific event. Do you ever see yourself from an outside angle, scrolling down a screen looking at photos of people you couldn't really give two hoots about, wondering why you waste so much time routinely performing that action? Don't get me wrong, I think Facebook is a great invention, particularly the messenger side of it and the group chat aspects, but part of me I think disagrees with the polished versions of ourselves that we display on our profiles. Sometimes I think that social media is just a tool to start an indirect war; how many times have you seen statuses clearly aimed at another person, or seen two people recently coming out of a relationship displaying an online contest of who's more over who? On a similar note I think Facebook is an extremely hard place to be post-break up, and I think it begins to contribute to sadness rather than take away from it when you're sat behind a screen looking at how well they're getting on without you.
All of that really wasn't the point of this post, the actual point based on people's reactions to the removal of my profile. It didn't seem like anything to talk about when I initially clicked 'delete', I just brushed my teeth and got into bed without really thinking about it. The next day someone told me that "deleting Facebook is like deleting your life" and it set the cogs of my mind going. Have we reached a place in society where removing an online profile not only removes your online presence, but also removes your position to have a presence, anywhere? For a long time we considered isolation to be sat behind a laptop screen, staring at newsfeeds without actually venturing outside and doing things with the people featured on them. Now, I wonder if the definition of isolation has evolved, to a place where not having the ability to scroll through a newsfeed isolates you from the rest of your peers and consequentially, your social life.
Since when did we become inclined to value a 'like' on Facebook more than a compliment from the same person in real life? As if self worth stems from a statistic rather than how we feel about ourselves at the end of the day. It's utterly crazy to me how much people share on Facebook (says the girl philosophising on the internet) and how far people are willing to go to appear a prominent member of society. I like Facebook, its useful and it can be entertaining, but I actually think setting the screen down and going it alone, without the backbone of 500 friends to support you, is a much more useful tool.
What are your thoughts on this? Is Facebook a helper or a hindrance?
Emily xoxo
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