Why I Left Facebook Forever
Friday, December 18, 2009 at 4:22PMFacebook is an incredible tool. Through Facebook I have kept contact with friends all over Europe and America. I have been able to photograph my child and let everyone see the photos in 5 minutes. Through setting my statuses with links to information on my various blogs I can direct traffic into my business or thinking. I can share links, photos, videos and let all 1000 of my friends know where I am, what I am doing, and why I am doing it while doing it. This is unprecedented and incredible. It is also incredibly useful. So why would I leave Facebook?
I have discovered, through the incessant use of Facebook for two years, that this medium is ultimately a failure despite these benefits. I believe it is a failure because it promotes the current cultural shortcoming of being glib. Anything you say, absolutely anything, must be kept short and stupid. I have had myriads of “friends” tell me that I was failing to be simple enough in statuses and notes. That I needed to keep it short and sweet. This is not a good thing and will only continue to further a glib and careless society that has time only for sound bites and flashes of light. A society that has the attention span of a hummingbird. How can I, as a Christian, seek to speak comprehensively and relevantly to a society desperately in need of substantial intellectual food? Facebook is, apparently, a completely failed medium in this respect.
Further, otherwise wonderful people who would never speak to my face with such rancor and abrasiveness find it necessary to critique everything I say and do not seek to further intelligent conversation. In fact, it would appear that these people do not even believe that intelligent conversation belongs on Facebook. My simple question is this: why would any honest Christian waste the precious and fleeting moments of this life on such banal nonsense as Facebook if intelligent conversation is not allowed on Facebook? Facebook has failed in this respect in furthering people’s careless and privatized attitude about religion, politics and anything that matters in life. If we as Christians continue to let the world know that we don’t care about truth by posting sound bites and flashes of light on Facebook we are being unfaithful.
Not to say that all Christians using Facebook are unfaithful. Many Christians use this resource to post needed prayer requests. To post updates on illness. To post updates on family and they leave it there. This is an upside to Facebook and these people do not necessarily need to stop using it.
However, what use is a tool that sucks up all of our precious moments in life when we could be reading? When we could be talking? When we could be studying? Why are we spending even 30 minutes (and this is a generous number...for many the time is exponentially higher than this) perusing other people’s walls? What is the point of this? Facebook is not a relational tool in the long run unless we intend to form relationships that run about an inch deep.
I desire to see Christians, myself included, oppose the glib anti-intelligence of our culture and spend their lives learning about God and spending time in relationship and mission.
Hours of Facebook is not helping this cause. When people would give up chocolate before they would give up Facebook, something is wrong. I can no longer honestly give this medium my approval. Even for business uses. Goodbye forever, Facebook.
Reader Comments (4)
Well, if this is the case, I need some way to be able to contact you...considering I don't even have your email address. You are my theology therapist...plus I'm going to miss you all even more if I don't even see you all around Facebook. :(
Hope things are going well! Tell Amelia and Cedric I said Merry Christmas. :)
Holy buckets! It's a whole Ryan Thompson blog entry devoted to the waste-of-time that is Facebook!...impressive! No, I understand. It's a silly waste of time designed to make people with no friends feel even worse about themselves because no one comments on their wall or status. That's my theory anyway, not that I would be speaking from personal experience or anything. *ahem* I gave it up for a few weeks in November, and it was great! Then I realized I had no way to contact people, so I gave into the temptation and started using it again. Perhaps getting rid of it is a good idea...
Hope you, Melia, and ton petit fils Cedric are doing well!
Good post Ryan
For me a majority of my FB friends are family and friends that have NEVER heard about Jesus. I try to Glorify God in my status updates. I feel that these are the only times that most my distant family and distant friends are going to hear anything about Jesus. It may not be much but it is something. Also I like to talk about pro-life issues,big families, home birth and other things people have No exposure to at all. The more we talk about these things the more they become an option to people. Most of these people I would most likely not talk to or call up or even go see..This is one reason I will keep using FB. I really miss you on FB. I do see your point though..
Yes, FB is a an incredible tool! I thank God for the saints who can use it and stay in control of themselves and find some way to counter the glibness and the anti-intelligence.
I, however, cannot support a tool which is built on the main premise of glibness and anti-intelligence.