by Rachel Kolb

On Sunday night, facing the truth that over 45 cumulative pages of final papers were calling my name, I swore off of Facebook.

Actually, “swore off” isn’t the right phrase. It implies that I have a measure of self-control, that I could distinguish myself from my legions of friends who complain, “I’m wasting time on Facebook! It’s such a time suck!” even while they… continue to waste time on Facebook, papers and projects languishing all the while. I forced myself off of Facebook, was more like it. Instead of signing a mental pact with myself or deactivating my account – which I theoretically could have just reactivated anyway – I handed my password over to my sister, had her change it, and then washed my hands of the whole thing.

Now, the obvious risks of such a move aside, I’ve been feeling surprisingly relieved. Even if my paper-writing hits a wall and I want to defer the strain (i.e., procrastinate) by taking a peep at my news feed, I can’t. My most recent status – telling my friends to text or email or come find me if they need me – is still there, gathering comments and “likes” for all I know. And I’ve been reflecting on what drives the text-based attraction of Facebook in the first place.

I was not someone who joined Facebook willingly. Even while my high school friends professedly used the website every night, I wrote my papers, wrote for fun, chatted with my family, read novels, and went to bed early. I admit it: I was antisocial, unwilling to become digitally active until the end of my freshman year at Stanford, when someone pointed out to me that if there was a venue for making more connections with people, I should use it. And then I discovered something else. For someone who considers herself an introvert, being social (or believing that I was social to some extent) became as easy as what I already enjoyed most: reading and writing. Through the interface of text, a medium which I already understood, I could appear to have a lively social life on the interwebz, all while protecting myself from the uncertainty of seeing other people face-to-face.

I need not describe the downward spiral from the time I gave in and joined, the exchanging of my private literary interests for the excitement of conducting textual interactions in a semi-public setting. Before this past Sunday, I had been increasingly struck by the fact that, on Facebook, my goals were not necessarily to “keep in touch with my friends!”, to waste my time, or even to tell the world my moment-by-moment answers to that question: “What’s on your mind?” Instead, as murky as they otherwise were, my goals all stemmed from the desire to have a social standing, to have my curiosity about other people satisfied, to have a presence in a way that promised minimal commitment and maximal affability. Most of all, the ability to construct this type of presence, frivolous and time-consuming though it may be, strongly appealed to my drive toward writing. I’ve long considered myself a writer, but I’ve also long maintained that I was a better writer before Facebook. And it’s true. When the source of this inner energy to narrate, to shape, to interact through words was channeled toward actual composition, it was unmistakably purer.

It was that feeling of undivided attention, of engrossment in the page rather than in my own construction of my life, that drove me to abstain from Facebook. As well as the sort of undivided attention I remember giving my friends and their words more of when I was 17. So I was only 17 then. But I remember sending long emails and letters and thank-you notes to my closest friends and relatives, as small as that group might have been. Instead of the cursory writing on someone’s wall or “liking” their status, I did text or email or go find someone if I needed them. As for the people who slipped through the cracks, the ones who nowadays amused me with an occasional post but otherwise never crossed my mind – all they added to my Facebook life was the feeling of being well-connected, and nothing more.

The truth is, since Sunday I’ve already felt the desire to post an amusing thought or link on a friend’s wall, or to see what that interesting acquaintance is saying next. But why not satisfy those curiosities on a personal level? Via direct writing or face-to-face? The truth is, Facebook has added distance to my sense of intimacy with friends, as well as the type of response I have to the happenings in their lives. What happens is less sharing than showcasing, casting onto others our own words or theirs, constantly aiming to alter a public consciousness through the textual proof of our presence.

I’m wondering if it all adds up to a process of narrative construction – which people have always done anyway, in life and in literature. As I use my time to grapple through concepts of narrative formation for an ever-lengthening honors thesis, it strikes me that this might be an interesting research topic indeed. But maybe that’s just the thesis speaking. Or my desire to procrastinate – again.