I am too terrible for Facebook.
Let me talk about social media.
I was part of a study that won’t let me look at Facebook for six weeks before the election. Okay, to be totally honest, when they were trolling for research participants they first asked me how much money it would take for me to not look at Facebook for six weeks. Five bucks a week? Ten? Nope, I picked the very highest amount of money they offered, which was $25/week, and frankly I thought it was too low but it was the most they offered. I also assumed I would be far too expensive for them to want to deal with, but lo and behold, I got an offer to join the study and at that point I felt like I had to go along with it because it felt like the kind of thing that should be really easy for most people who are good and kind and don’t struggle with impulse control, and maybe I could pretend that was me for a hot minute. (That’s all of you, right? You all have it figured out? So can you send help, please, because I’m kind of a wreck.)
Honestly, it was actually super scary to have them take my Facebook/pacifier away. I had a small panic attack and definitely mindlessly opened my phone dozens of times over the next few days. I felt disconnected while also experiencing a feeling that has been strong for me throughout the pandemic - that everyone really is hanging out without me while I mold myself deeper into my couch. But I also have some awareness of what happens when I normally look at Facebook, which generally falls into the following themes:
I go into some kind of time suck where I waste at least three times as much time as I had anticipated. Serious. Waste. Of. Time.
My most petty self comes out and screws around. You know the one. Or maybe you are a nice and good person, so you don’t. But for me, I go way past schadenfreude to actively searching for anything that would make a person seem crappy. Or I watch someone doing well or being interesting and I curse them out. I look for the imperfections and flaws, the things that could make them seem bad or spoiled or uninformed, and I hone in on them like a really mean and maladjusted laser. Ugh. (I would hate to have someone do that to me. Why am I being so crappy? Insecurity. And the idea that if someone else has/does something better, it is somehow taking something away from me. Blech, this makes me feel like garbage. What a super fun cycle this is.) I will seek out someone I vaguely dislike and dive into their page and their posts, looking for something to make me feel justified in my bad feelings towards them. Something good happened? Screw you. You are just so privileged/lucky/arrogant/rich/spoiled/insert crappy thing here.
I go into a pit of despair over all of the hateful things people post. These are usually related to politics, but might be just other offerings related to issues of racial or social justice. The political posts, the fringe posts, the “my Black friend says racism isn’t real so guess what it’s not” posts. The hateful memes. The conspiracy theories. The “this might not be true, but what if it is???” posts. I then get irreconcilable anxiety about the dismal direction this country is going in and cry/have an anxiety attack/rage.
FOMO to the max. You went and did a cool thing? Damn you, why didn’t I get to do that? (Never-mind that I don’t really have any interest in that thing. Evidently there is a piece of me that just doesn’t want ANYONE to have ANY fun without me. I, clearly, am the center of the whole freaking universe AND DON’T FORGET IT.) Or I look at all the cool events happening and want to sign up for fifty of them, undoubtedly overbooking myself and making myself miserable.
Why on earth do you need so much validation that you need to post a picture of everything you ever do and everyone you ever see, seeking likes and comments and virtual bizzarro support? Do I need to know about that lunch? That rock you saw? That drive? That time you exercised? What is the purpose of this? What are you seeking? Can Facebook give it to you? And then I get miserly, knowing that someone is seeking validation for some thing (and yeah, we all need validation sometimes and why am I being so crummy about someone asking for some?) and still I refuse to give it to them. Would we continue to share things if no one could comment or like them? Would we just share our Shutterfly albums and call it a day? Why don’t we do that? Why do we have a need for this kind validation? Can we truly feel support in this way? And why am I so offended by it that I want to withhold any validation at all? Interestingly, I see this maybe the most often perpetrated by seniors and elders, who have perhaps berated youth for being on their phones too much at other times. As Michael Scott would say, oh, the turntables. I feel like it’s an addiction for them/me. And is any addiction good? Which leads me to my grand conclusion that Facebook is an addiction for me. I mean, I literally had to be paid to go off of it, so there’s that.
Of course, I occasionally look at memes that make me smile, cool life updates or pictures, or learn about neat events or articles. But 95% of Facebook is the above garbage, and far more often, looking at Facebook fills me with FOMO, the certainty that my life is boring and far worse than everyone else’s, envy for all the things I don’t have and can’t do, and provides more fuel for my existential despair fire that rages pretty nonstop these days. Super fun, right? Really brings out the best in me.
And the other thing is, in true Social Dilemma form, it is SO hard to stop scrolling, to stop pushing that dang button. The minutes and hours tick by, gone, lost into oblivion. Is that really what I want to be doing with my time? Surely not.
And here’s another wild thing - it is so much easier to tell people “Oh, I’m part of a study, so I can’t be on Facebook right now” than it would be to say “Oh, Facebook turns me into a useless, envious, petty, depressed monster, so I’m staying off of it.” That makes me feel so weak and helpless and again, far worse than everyone else. No one else has this problem, right? It’s just me? Everyone else can stay away from their phone for hours and days easily, right? No one else feels crappy when they look at social media? Everyone else can easily look at it for a five-minute mood boost and put it away? Nobody else cares about how many likes their photos get and they surely never notice who didn’t like their posts and hold a bit of a grudge? Or withhold validation for no other reason than being kind of miserly?
Maybe it is just me. But it would be pretty arrogant to think that in this sea of billions of people, I am experiencing a thing in a completely unique way that no one has ever felt before.
I am not that special.
So I am writing about it. Because maybe you, too, need a study to join to justify going off Facebook. I’ll sign you up. It’s the Haley study and you’re officially part of it. You’re not alone.
Maybe we can put our monsters to rest together. Or at least try to be slightly less crappy people.