Friendonomics (or: Why I’m not on Facebook/MySpace)
Facebook: the craze that’s sweeping the nation! I know things are getting nutty when my wife recently signed up for Facebook. My students seem to talk about MySpace all the time. I have frequently seen teachers argue that, since the kids are on Facebook, we should be there, too. Well, I am here to refuse the invitation. I have been long opposed to personally entering the social networking arena. I think it shows in that the social networking tools that I do use are pretty much mainly for connecting to other teachers. While we may joke around quite a bit (at this very moment we are quoting Mel Brooks movies at each other), at the end of the day, I’m building relationships with people I can be useful to and who might be able to help me out. I honestly didn’t get Twitter until I started using it to connect with other teachers, about a year after I first signed up for it.
I’ve often had a loose kind of feeling as to why I shouldn’t go to Facebook, telling people “In my day, when we wanted to forget people from High School, we could!” This has been clarified a bit for me in this article by Scott Brown.
I’ve never lost touch with anyone, it seems. What I’ve lost is the right to lose touch.
Well, I absolutely reserve the right to lose touch. Quite frankly, I take a pretty hardline view on my firends: if we wanted to stay in touch, we would have. Given the amount of tools already at my disposal to be in contact with people I know, Facebook wouldn’t make much of a difference in my ability to keep in contact with somebody if I really wanted to.
Why do I feel this way?
Unlike my friend Jay, an actual friend that I talk to, I wouldn’t classify myself as a misanthrope. Rather, I am an introvert. To be specific, according to the Myers-Briggs, I am an INTJ. In Caring for Your Introvert, Jonathan Rauch wrote the following:
In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say “Hell is other people at breakfast.” Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.
Discovering this about myself in the past few years has helped to make sense of a lot of things for me. I quite literally DO get tired by being around other people…not something easy when your job requires you to stand in front of a bunch of people and interact with them for 7 hours a day. I’ve heard of Facebook as being something like an online party. To me, the very concept is rather horrifying. I want to a wedding yesterday and am exhausted. Do I need any more of that online? No thanks. What I need is to sit quietly with my computer, listening to a movie playing behind me. Fortunately, I have an understanding wife who so far does not seem to get too upset over my long periods of silence.
As a child, my mother was sometimes a bit concerned by how, during the summer, I wouldn’t necessarily spend lots of time with other kids. Looking back, of course, I realize that I needed the recharge time. Right now I’m honestly feeling sad for all the little Introverts who can’t escape socialization in every aspect of their increasingly connected lives.
Please keep in mind that I’m not arguing against the very concept of Facebook itself. I’m just saying it’s not for me. Like David Truss argues,
I am not advocating for necessary presence, and I am not advocating for us taking on a burden of responsibility. I am saying that we should have the choice to be there and we should have the choice to interact with students on social networking sites such as Facebook.
School districts should absolutely not tell teachers they’re disallowed from using social networking tools, but at the same time, I hope some of the more die-hard “we need to meet them where they are” types understand that not every tool is for every teacher. Facebook is most decidedly not for me. All you other introverts, I hope you’ll continue to join me in being alone.
While I’m at it, maybe I should finally write that post about why I don’t like Plurk. Take THAT, Social Networking sites!
October 27th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Dan,
I really like how this post compliments mine that you linked to. You add a perspective that I couldn’t, and I enjoyed reading it!
I choose to be on Facebook, but don’t really like it… and, like you, I hate Plurk… so I’ll see you on Twitter:-)
Dave.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Your article has put into words almost exactly how I feel about (virtual) social networking. I like the corellation you have drawn between introversion and an aversion to such ‘tools’ as Facebook and the like. I didn’t realise exactly how specific the definition of introversion was until reading your article so I thank you for describing it.
In my group of friends only myself and one other remain unregistered, and if anything I am more resolved now than ever before to keep it that way.
Usually when I tell people I choose not to have a Facebook account, I’m faced with a confused frown resembling a look of total uncomprehension. This is followed by something like:
“But it’s so useful, it’s so easy to arrange to meet up and stuff…”
And then maybe a little honesty:
“…also, you don’t want to be left out!”
I’ve seen encounters between supposed friends who have met unexpectedly, only to awkwardly exchange brief greetings and quickly part ways with a token “…I’ll talk to you on Facebook.” If they genuinely wanted to talk to one another, they would have, there and then, but the truth is that, for one reason or another, they don’t want to. They are nothing more to each other than points on their Facebook Friend List.
I see Facebook (and the others) as the modern equivalent of the answerphone; it’s a device to let people feel like they have friends, but they don’t actually have to interact with them if they don’t want to. It makes socialising so much more comfortable; you don’t have to be actively involved, it saves having to engage in intelligent conversation, and allows people to avoid tiring themselves out through being witty.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
What a fantastic post. I was on Facebook for two months and then I had to deactivate my account. After giving it some thought I decided that the whole ’social networking revolution’ wasn’t for me. I’m more productive now that I’m anonymous again.
Of course I no longer know when one of my ‘friends’ is about to go to bed, ready for a holiday, etc. but that is something I’ll have to learn to deal with…
Simon Harrison’s last blog post..Why you should learn Colemak
December 1st, 2008 at 11:44 am
Кто в теме тот понимает, не в обиду другим