I am a Facebook Divorcee

Yesterday, I deactivated my Facebook account. Why, you ask? Because Facebook no longer serves my needs in its capacity as a networking tool. In short, I don't need it anymore.

This may seem absurd or strange to many of you, but it makes perfect and logical sense to me. Facebook was introduced, like all things cool on the Internet, to me by friends and rapidly became an outlet for time better spent studying. We all used to joke about how much time we spent on Facebook: updating our profiles, reading other people's walls, searching for new friends to add, etc. We allowed it to consume our lives.

Eventually, Facebook added the News Tracker feature, which allowed users to track any and all movements of other users on Facebook. This was met with anger and dismay, as it opened the door for real "stalking" not just the joking kind of stalking we all claimed to do to each other. You could literally see everything a person did on Facebook, down to the exact changes made to a section of a personal profile.

Following that came the true opening of the floodgates: admittance of non-university/college users. You no longer had to have a university or college e-mail account that was registered with Facebook to become a member. Anyone could join as long as the invite was sent out by a current member. Soon, the Facebook network became infested with all manner of users. This to me, was incomprehensible given MySpace's security problems with real-life stalkers and pedophiles. Add to this, Facebook users' tendency to post drunken pictures of themselves on their profiles and you have a breeding ground for seedy online encounters.

A confidential source has also informed me of the unofficial use of Facebook to screen potential employees by employers. This is not entirely legal, especially in the case of gays, where sexuality can be used as a mark against an otherwise polished and qualified resume. However, employers cannot legally be charged with discrimination as the information posted on many Facebook accounts can be retrieved by virtually anyone, and can thus be argued to be public information.

I found myself looking through the Home page in my Facebook account, and wondering what I was looking at. There was an overload of information being thrown at me: so-and-so changed his picture, so-and-so wrote on so-and-so's wall, so-and-so is now friends with so-and-so. The list goes on. It was like being bombarded with useless and more-often-than-not irrelevant information. Despite my attempts to eliminate this feature from my account, I was still unable to truly appreciate the complexity of Facebook anymore. I no longer felt compelled to sift through other people's profiles. I no longer enjoyed reading snippets of conversations on other people's walls. It just seemed so utterly, and completely useless to me.

So let's summarize, shall we. Facebook is bad because it is a) a waste of time, b) ideal for real stalking, c) a negative impact on employment opportunities, and d) a stadium for competitions to see who has the most friends on the most networks. That last point shouldn't need explaining. The competitive nature of college/university students is perfect for this style of one-up-manship. On the surface it appears to boost self-esteem, when it is in fact decreasing self-worth by reinforcing the notion that more friends means greater self-worth. This is completely untrue, as often a person's closest friends tend to form a rather small circle. So you can see, Facebook is also detrimental to a person's mental and psychological health.

I have therefore decided it no longer serves my needs in the realm of communication. Given my current network of friends, I see no reason to keep this account open and active. Many of the contacts on my list no longer keep in contact with me, nor I them. If you need to contact me, or leave me messages, e-mail will suffice.