The Archives

At 32 years old, I finally joined Facebook. I felt like how my mother did when I introduced her shaking hands to the world of text messaging at 55—too old, confused and slightly irritated. That quickly gave way to manic excitement when Suzanne, a friend from high school who I hardly knew, “friended” me. I was shocked when the process worked in reverse. I was getting friend suggestions for people that I had long since lost touch with. Facebook’s recommendations were intuitive at best, Orwellian at worst. Suddenly, the world seemed small, in the best possible way.

I found myself in a race to acquire friends. I was hooked. People I knew through alumni networks, my brother’s ex-girlfriend, a kennel-owner and my hair colorist were suddenly my virtual friends. Before I knew it, I was in the triple digits. Many of my Facebook friends were people I hadn’t seen in decades or people who I had no intention of socializing with outside of Facebook. I’m sure many of my friends would have said the same of me.

Beyond friending everyone in sight, I discovered there was another element at play. I was reveling in the flow of information, status updates and photos of all my Facebook friends.  It reminded me of the voyeuristic feeling of walking through an open house.

The novelty eventually wore off, and I realized that I was sharing my life with almost perfect strangers. I also felt a twinge of guilt when I noticed I had slipped into using Facebook as a replacement for other modes of communication. I was commenting on relative’s photo albums, and suddenly I didn’t feel so bad when I couldn’t make family trips. After all, wasn’t I keeping in touch? It was also difficult to sift through the clutter of my virtual friends to see what my real-life friends and family were up to. “Kathy has rescued a new calf from Farmville….” Do I really care? After thinking about deactivating my account or chucking my laptop out the window, I realized something had to be done.

When my frustration reached a boiling point, I thought of sage advice my mother had given me. After catching a glimpse of my loaded down closet—complete with tag adorned items—she said that clothes I hadn’t worn in the last year should be tossed or donated.  This same theory could be applied to my stockpile of Facebook friends. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pared down collection of friends, whom I actually wanted to keep in touch with?

First I cancelled my account, and took note of my friends. Then I pretended that every one of these friends lived in my neighborhood. If I had a giant barbeque, would I invite them? Would they invite me to theirs? After this litmus test, my friend list was pruned to down to 50. My feed was reserved for family members, actual friends and close colleagues. My virtual life was as tidy as my closet.

Sometimes less really is more.