The Dark Side of Facebook

It's still dark outside, and I can hear the birds of morning. Well, they are the same birds that either chirped or sat quietly through the night, but it feels more poetic to call them the "birds of morning." There, I was just excruciatingly transparent. Writers write, and we try to inject art into the everyday. It's what we do.

It's a changing day in what's left of my life. I made a quality-of-life decision recently that I have made in the past, but without lasting success. Here's hopin' (raises coffee mug) that this last week or so's resolve holds. I feel led by God to carry it to completion. To hold onto my freedom, as I see it.

I decided to quit Facebook. Oh, I still have a profile. I still check in every morning. But the one hour or less I spend each morning represents nothing to the hours and hours I was logging before. I still have a tenuous hold on the FB hobby groups that I camped in every single day (and they are all good). 

What I discovered about FB through my enslavement to it, was that it has a patently dark side. It's a lure, designed by brilliant marketers, that captivates and locks down the lonely, the isolated, the insecure. I'm all of the above at any given point. I lived for the chat box. I spent hours talking to people who, should they meet me in person, might thoroughly detest me. I gave them huge hunks of my precious time. Not all of my chat buddies fall into this camp, but many do, I am sure.

I've read several articles about the positives of leaving Facebook in the last couple of weeks. It's been interesting to hear others talk about the struggles they faced while on the site (jealousy, time wasting, etc.). I'm a highly sensitive person, so I was being hurt pretty much around the clock. IN. CYBERSPACE. There's plenty to hurt me in real life. Why, oh why, was I messing around with holographic hurt?

I'm a compulsive communicator. Facebook became my heroine. It was a thoroughly narcissistic outlet for me, as I love a good sarcastic quip like a monkey loves bananas. I was born to need praise like fish need water. It's crazy and it's sinful and it was a life-draining source of spiritual conflict for me, this obsession with "likes."

I've discovered you can "leave" something that has a hold on you by simply minimizing its presence in your life. The lack of time spent makes Goliath an ant in terms of influence. To be perfectly honest, I felt God asking me to make this decision. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I still want to be in touch with all of the wonderful friends I have on my profile. I just don't want to be hooked to all that is Facebook by the intravenous drip that I had before. I've yanked the needle out!