Remember the days before Facebook
Written by Crow's Nest Staff, Apr 29, 2013, 0 Comments
My best friend from high school had a baby last month. I didn’t even know that she was pregnant. Out of touch? No. I’m not on Facebook.
A social media outlet that I’ve avoided like the plague has wormed its way into my day-to-day against my best efforts.
Friends are angry that I never showed up to their party last weekend. Family members are hurt that I missed their latest reunion. Campus events may as well be conducted by secret societies unless someone scrawls it on the sidewalk in chalk. Discounts at restaurants and department stores are only available to those who “like” them on — you guessed it — Facebook.
Facebook calculated that more than a billion people around the world actively use the site each month. The United States Census Bureau estimates the total world population is well over 7 billion. How does the usage of a website by approximately 14 percent of the world’s population cause such a change in the way people communicate?
Many people don’t talk to each other about the important occasions in their life anymore. They’ve posted it with 20 tagged photos on their Facebook page and sent it out into cyberspace for the masses to scroll past as they skim over the day’s updates.
But the emotion of the moment is lost. If your friend “likes” your news, is that really the same as sharing the story with them over coffee? An “LOL” is not the same as sharing a laugh face-to-face or giggling your way through a phone call.
I miss the paper invitations from days gone by, and the Saturday afternoon phone call between friends to catch up on the week’s gossip. The stack of photographs of your vacation, still warm from the photo lab, is a distant memory. Hands had to be contorted into just the right claw to grip photos from the edges. Friends don’t let friends leave smudges. And if a picture surfaced of you passed out in a Perkins booth after a long night of drinking — or so I’ve been told — it could be torn into oblivion, not tagged by everyone you know on Facebook.
Let’s get back to that phone call. Or, gasp, visit one another just to talk. Throw a party and mail the invitations to your friends. Yes, the paper kind (of invitations, not friends). Take a photo of the moment and have it printed.
Remember how things were before Facebook.
