posted on Feb, 14 2012 @ 07:22 AM
This is my first thread here on ATS, and i thought what i'm about to post is probably quite necessary, as it provokes thought on facebook, as well as
our social interaction on the internet in general. Please mind the size, but again, i want to put it out there.
I figured it would be more on the health and wellbeing side of things as far as forum categories goes, but mods, please feel free to move this if you
feel it's not quite suitable. Thankyou!
Okay, so i am (well, hopefully not for long) a facebook addict of 3 years? I think? Well a long time. I joined facebook at a time that it hadn't
quite gained mainstream popularity yet, and was just a small site that was shared amongst a few. I hated it at the time because it required your full
name, and simply didn't like that one thing about it.
Also, it was when myspace was at it's prime, and as a 18 year old, i was hanging more towards the popular site that my mates all used - At the time,
myspace was a great social platform, that i become very keen on using.
When i finally got dragged into facebook, it deepened. It was great. At the time. I posted random sh*t, made a few comments.
But over a year, it became more serious, more "friends", useless posts, rants, online fights/keyboard warrior, etc. (That's what i make of it now -
at the time, i took it seriously).
As it was, a good friend of mine decided he found my posts useless, but not enough to make a song and dance about it. Things escalated when i made up
a joke page taking on the persona of a "train line" here in my extremely multicultural city. However, i take racism very seriously, and always
maintained the page as a satire on all races - not just the one.
One girl decided to condemn a post regarding the drinking habits of the indigenous race of my country, labelling it as racist (while disregarding all
the other posts making fun of my own race as well).
But i'm digressing. My good mate through high school decided to take her side and lose me as a good friend.
I wasn't worried, as he had problems anyway.
Just a year ago, i went in and deleted 90% of my friends because they were nobodies to me.
But just the other day, a closer mate told me over lunch some very interesting words. I went to post something to his wall, and he joked "Daniel, you
don't know yet?". I said "what?", and he replied "i deleted you".
After some questioning, he told me that a lot of what i was posting was exhausting (to him) and the deletion was for his sanity (never thought i'd
have such an effect on someone).
We went through all my posts and he got my to realise (which became more obvious), that my posts generally started with "i". I was obviously showing
a very self centred internet persona that he stated was very counter productive to my own time.
I had contemplated deleting it before, but i just got sick at this point. I went home and deactivated it (not deleted). It was fine for a couple of
hours.... Then it hit me.
The withdrawals.
I'm not kidding. Every 5 minutes i was going to firefox to open up facebook. I don't smoke, so i have nothing to compare it to, but some people
associated it with a smoking addiction.
Day 1 was quite hard. I was going to log in every 5 minutes (which i stopped myself)
Day 2 was met with questions, like "what am i going to do now?", "what if i get invited to somewhere on facebook?", how do i talk to people? I
actually forgot what people look like.
Now it's day 3, and after realising i can't go on facebook, i'm seriously stuck. There is no site i go on now other than ATS, and maybe some diy
sites. But i feel a big side of me has disappeared, and i'm unable to move.
Anyway, i want to ask people on their opinions. Has anyone here ever had to deal with internet addiction - namely social networking sites. Has anyone
actually given up, and how did they find it?
I've actually asked myself today how i'm going to meet people now, and feel like i've just thrown myself in an isolated hole in the middle of a
desert. What are some suggestions on what i SHOULD be doing? This sort of raises the question "how did the older people deal without such proximity
between one another".