Why I Love Facebook

People who think Facebook is some sort of apocalypse for actual relationships couldn't be more wrong. Facebook is directly responsible for maintaining many of my most important relationships.

Thanks to Facebook, I can interact with my brothers and sisters-in-law all the time. I get to hear stories about my nephews and nieces and see pictures of them. We argue with one another, tease each other, and share music, videos, and other things we know the others will appreciate. We can offer support when we're having a bad day and remind each other that we're loved.

The same things are true for my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am friends with 19 of my 27 cousins and 15 of my 21 aunts & uncles! With a family that large and spread almost all the way across the country, could there be a better way to keep in touch with everyone so easily? Now I often know things before Mom can tell me in our weekly phone calls, and once in awhile I actually know something about someone in the family before she does!

Facebook would already be worth my time for keeping my family so close, but it is also an invaluable link to friends of every kind. All of our friends "here" live at least an hour away and finding time to get together is difficult. Facebook keeps us connected when we are apart. (Heck, it keeps us connected when we're just sitting a few feet away from each other at work!) The same is true for "old" friends. Friends from high school, from college, from previous jobs. Kids I used to babysit. Parents I used to babysit for. Past friends. Best friends. Lifelong friends. Not everyone you ever knew has to stay in your life forever. There are plenty of people from high school I'm not friends with on Facebook. But I've had to say goodbye to too many people in my life that I didn't want to leave. And thanks to Facebook some of them are part of my life again.

Maybe it isn't who you know on Facebook that the naysayers object to, but how you interact with others online. Anyone who thinks the kinds of interaction that occur through Facebook are shallow is also wrong. Maybe they think that sharing funny pictures, favorite videos, and interesting links is too trivial, but quite frankly the same could be said of sitting around drinking together and talking about sports. What matters is that people are connecting with one another in ways that mean something to them. Because of what my friends and family post on Facebook, I see articles that keep me informed about what is going on in my hometown and the world, and I get to read firsthand accounts of newsworthy events all over the country. They make me laugh and they encourage me when I'm having a hard time. In return, I try to do the same for them. We commiserate, we advise, we reassure, we debate, we entertain, we enlighten. Isn't that what relationships are all about?

And I, at least, also get a certain benefit that is extremely important for me: it keeps me connected to the human race. I've always struggled with being both very social and very antisocial, sometimes alternating between the two and sometimes feeling both at the same time. I've always been misanthropic, but I'm at my happiest when I'm surrounded by people whose company I enjoy. Moving to New Hampshire was a triple-whammy of "bad" in this sense. I packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away from the Midwestern university town (1) where virtually all of my social support network remained (2) to a part of the country where the population density makes it virtually impossible to get away from other people (3) and where the vast majority of those people are nothing like the people I was used to dealing with (see #1). In the 8 years since I moved here my misanthropic tendencies have almost completely taken over and my faith in humanity is at a critical low. I truly understand what the term alienation can mean now. I sometimes feel like the worst of deceivers when I try to argue what is best for Society and the Human Race when I don't feel like I belong to either one. But Facebook helps. It reminds me that there are good and interesting people in the world, and that they still allow me to interact with them. It puts a familiar face on opinions and perspectives which are different from my own and, because they come in the voices of people I care about, I have a reason to listen and to try to focus on the common ground between us. Facebook is a reminder of what I have in common with other people and why I have a reason to care about other people.

No, Facebook is not the harbinger of the downfall of Society. Face-to-face relationships are not the only way the Human Race has ever maintained real relationships. Historically, friends and family members used to relocate across oceans and never see each other again, but they stayed in touch for the rest of their lives through letters. And as for quality of communication, while some letter writers may have been quite talented with words, I'm sure there were just as many people who were nearly illiterate but wrote anyway. Or actually were illiterate and paid someone else to transcribe their letters. Verbal communication has always been even less formal. I doubt anyone could find evidence that the inane banter among idiotic Facebook users is any less erudite than the inane face-to-face banter among their idiotic counterparts of past generations.

I admit, I would rather hold my friends' babies than just see pictures. I'd prefer to see my nieces' and nephews' antics in person. I would rather share a meal with my friends and talk for hours. I'm a little jealous of my extended family members who can finagle the time and money to travel and see one another. But life is full of limitations, and when they keep us from doing what we'd like most, Facebook offers us the next best thing. With the added bonus of allowing us to interact with people to whatever degree we are comfortable, at whatever time works best for us, even when we're sick.

Yeah, I know, there are vast avenues of consideration I haven't touched. I've profiled at least a dozen books in the past year or two about the sociological issues and ramifications of technologically-mediated social interaction, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm standing by what I've said here. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I've considered letting some of it go unread. That's part of the reason I only friend people I have actually met in real life. I'm not dissing online-only friends, but if I'm going to make new friends they need to be flesh-and-blood friends. Otherwise, I don't have enough time now as it is. But that part of me that craves social interaction doesn't want to miss any of the party that is Facebook. It makes me sad that a number of the people I know who have accounts rarely or never use them. I'm sure we'd both say to one another, "But you're missing so much." We'd both be right, and we'd both be wrong. I need Facebook. How much of it I need may change someday. Doing other things instead might be good for me, too. But for now, I'm proud to be a FB junkie.