"How can that be?" a voice in my head cries out. "Facebook has the power to connect people all across the planet, make images available from children to Grandmas to cousins alike, empowers small businesses to have a presence on the web for free where in the past they had nothing!" My split personality makes a good point, even as it becomes indignant.
And yet, for all the potential of Facebook, I've never met anyone there from a distant land, never formed a meaningful connection that wouldn't have been formed without Facebook.
What I have done however, is wasted countless hours clicking and browsing and gaping at the goings-on of people on my social periphery, juuust relevant enough to justify a phrase I had never used before Facebook: "time suck." Facebook holds an allure barely-sufficiently tantalizing to trick the brain into believing that the time spent staring dumbly at all the on-screen words and pictures is a useful endeavor, while the truth is that porn or cereal commercials or YouTube videos of kittens climbing into shoes are more productive.
The downsides don't stop there. While I can't be sure, I suspect that my frequent, long-form blog entries, the writing of which gave me so much joy, were truncated and subjugated and pacakged like Velveeta cheese into "status updates," the literary version of "The Jersey Shore." Just having the optional outlet of Facebook statuses seemed to divert the flow of my creativity, a turn of events that I still smartly lament, whatever the true cause.
Getting back to the unfulfilled potential of Facebook: just why is it that people do not reach out of their narrow social avenues and make friends in other countries or social strata? Granted, Facebook does a globe-hopping virtual tourist no favors -- have you ever tried to search for something or someone you didn't already know? A true Facebook search is still maddening, to this day.
Even so, the lack of broad interaction cannot be laid largely at Mark Zuckerburg's feet. I have found an iPhone app called "Wander" that hooks people together from different countries. I made a friend recently in the Netherlands; once we exchanged some personal details and became pals, we connected on Facebook and he is now free to witness the quizzical madness I exhibit there. However, we never would have met if were left up to Facebook alone.
There are some things that Facebook provides for which I am glad. I am glad that I can share images, videos, events and thoughts across the Internet in a format that children and old ladies can navigate, and that it is ostensibly free. I am glad that I can keep in touch with my daughter and her new baby, even if we don't make the most of it. I am glad that my friends have an outlet for themselves; some of them would never have exposed themselves in such a way without Facebook.
But for me, it's time for a step back; an acknowledgement that the currently-most-popular social platform has its limitations; a recognition that the web offers myriad other choices for self-expression and connections to other humans; and a renewed interest in an old friend, my blog.
And if I don't have a significant increase in the frequency or length of new blog postings, I'll feel like a real dick.
