Hiding Our Faces: Why I Left Facebook

(I know it's long.  I invite you to read it all)

We used to look at people; we looked at them in the eyes.  We felt the energy of closeness and movement.  The way the body moved spoke and framed words in the context of attitude.  The way the eyebrows raised and fell created emotion, humor …and horror.  We put our hands on our hips, on our cheek, on their shoulder.  Hands were extended to befriend and clutched to violate.  Our tongues moved, expressing love and destitution.  Our hips did sway; our legs often didn’t know what to do with themselves.  We expressed our embarrassment without a sound and our boldness without a word.  We hugged and kissed and liked… befriending.  We were not flippant. …We used to be human.

Many of us maintain these “primitive” ways of relating.  And yet increasingly we participate in relationships through medium.  We engage words without hearing voices.  Impressions are seen without connecting eyes.  We encounter comfort without arms that embrace.  We communicate without understanding because context is invisible.  We befriend too many to know deeply.  We express our approval with a click of the mouse.  Facebook has hidden our faces.

Our relationships consist of slogans through status updates.  Our interactions have lost their content and depth because one-liners define who we are.  Or rather, we define ourselves by using one-liners.  And, please forgive my insensitivity: who really cares what you had for dinner?  Who really cares about your every detail of life?  Why are those priceless pieces of information?  We mark our status and go away, hoping people will affirm us for our expressions.  We live, hoping people will “like” our contribution.  And we return excited to read the comments.  Our minds have never logged off; we are making a home where nobody lives. 

In fact, “Facebook Home” is coming out on April 12^th.  It’s “the family of apps that puts your friends at the heart of your phone.”  What does this mean?  “Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment.”  It’s an opportunity to never miss a moment while the real world, real people and real faces, pass us by without notice.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re just so scared to be alone.  So we sit there alone, in that chair, without anyone else around us, staring at a screen.  We live in our face-less medium-sized home, alone… and with 500 friends.

Or maybe we’re just so bored… Have you ever sat on Facebook, scrolling the “news feed,” feeding on unconnected fragments of information?  Have you ever sat there for 30 minutes?  An hour?  How’s that going for you?  I feel depressed after my Facebook binges.  I feel lost and confused.  I end up knowing a lot about people without really knowing them.  Why wasn’t I staring at my wife’s beautiful face for that hour?  The information displaces interaction. 

Let’s be sensible.  We want to maintain our relationships with our “friends,” people whom we haven’t seen in ten or fifteen years… or ever.  The five hundred “friends” we accumulated somehow need to be known by us, while our next-door neighbors have never met us before.  The western cultural community is defined by the ability to choose community.  There is liberation in choosing people you want to know.  But living those relationships through Facebook has expanded our community so much that depth of relationship is polluted. 

I feel polluted… Like the pollution that destroys our beautiful world, Facebook is polluting our relationships by destroying the beauty of interaction.  It chokes what is natural to personhood.  It is rewiring us to have slogan-based relationships, devoid of context and depth. 

There are too many examples of people who have “liked” my status and commented on my photos that, in real life, never even talk to me.  I see them, come near to them and am ignored by them.  Facebook gives us a platform for community that doesn’t necessarily lead to relationship.  The good I see in Facebook are those seldom moments when a real-life meeting is arranged unexpectedly.  This has happened to me twice.  The first time was with my cousin-in-law whom we noticed, via Facebook, to be passing through Washington D.C.  The second time was today, when we met up with a friend, thanks to him changing his location to Boulder, CO.  I’ve been on Facebook for nine years.  Is twice in nine years worth it? 

Facebook’s promotion of schizophrenia has also caused me to question its worth.  Yes, schizophrenia:

“A breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion and a sense of mental fragmentation.” 

When our son Asa died, we called and emailed friends and family to share the tragic news.  We also used Facebook.  Comments and posts of love, support and affirmation were prevalent.  They were encouraging and showed us that so many people were with us in our pain.  For every comment of comfort however, there were two announcements of pregnancies and births, pictures of baby-bumps and baby faces.  In real life, nobody would push such things in our faces.  And really it’s no one’s fault.  Facebook is made for the mixing of information.  But it gives no time to mourn or rejoice.  All there is time for is advertising our lives like billboards.  There is no opportunity to weep the death of loved ones because the life of others blinds us. 

And we are blind, too, of context.  Only on Facebook will a nice, smiley photo of you join the “news feed”, thanks to someone “tagging” you without permission.  People then comment, “You look great.”  But inside you are dead because your son just died two months before.  Only through partnership with Facebook can people cry with you over the phone or in person and then also post comments about how great their lives are going.  Those posts are out of context.  They don’t take into account the environment of real-life experience.  They do not reflect a sense of reality.  And so people “like” them and comment on them as though life were as it should be.  And those who mourn see this and wonder about such fragmentation.  We wonder about the inappropriate actions as we wander in our brokenness.  Thanks to Facebook we are becoming schizophrenic.

Recently I noticed someone posting about an ensuing human trafficking protest.  I affirm protest.  I think it’s a healthy part of being an American.  But how were they to protest?  Were they going to D.C.?  Were they writing their senator?  Were they petitioning for the cause?  Were they going to infiltrate networks of human trafficking to help rescue some from within?  No, no, no, none of these.  This person chose the grand tamale of protest: what would be more shocking than to protest human trafficking by logging off Facebook for a day?  Is our generation this inept that by logging off Facebook we are making a statement?  What would our great-great-grandfathers think of us from afar as they fought to abolish slavery and keep the union, or our grandfathers on the beaches of Normandy?  No, our generation sits on its butt all day and advertises itself. 

Why was I on Facebook then, you might ask?  Simply, I was addicted to the distracting mass of information.  It’s hard to get away from constant stimulation.  And yet retreating is the only way to reignite my humanity.  I’m sure if you have gotten this far, you are unique.  I really don’t expect anyone to get this far in reading this.  We have no attention spans anymore.  We read in segments, not wholes.  We are losing capacity to think deeply.  We are shallow.  Facebook encourages us to be stupid.  And I don’t want to be stupid.  And I want real relationships.  I’m sick of hiding my face in Facebook.

(If you feel betrayed or abandoned because I'm running out of our Facebook home, give me a call.  i'll assure you that I love you dearly.  You are not my problem.  Only the mix of Facebook and myself are my problem.  And if you do feel betrayed or abandoned, maybe you need to leave Facebook yourself.)