The road to addiction is paved with status updates

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

There are friends who laugh together, friends who talk for hours, friends who show up in crisis, friends who share food, friends who may as well be family. 
 I am lucky enough to have many of those kinds of friends, near and far. I can listen to their voices, shop with them, hug them, dine with them and travel with them. I trust them with my family, my pets, my money, my emotional well-being. 
I dare say most of them would bail me out of jail. 
So we’re clear that I’m not an anti-social loner in a Kaczynski cabin?
I just don’t have any Facebook friends. Because I’ve never joined Facebook. I am not one of the 1 billion-with-a-B people on the planet who use Facebook. Seven out of 10 Americans who are active online visit Facebook, according to Nielsen, the folks who also keep track of our TV viewing. 
I’m in the minority, but I’ve never really been one to succumb to peer pressure, which was especially helpful when high-school peers were inhaling nitrous oxide from whipped-cream cans. And on Senior Skip Day at Wilmington High School, I was sitting nerdily in class because I had perfect attendance I didn’t want to ruin. ​

It’s not that I’m necessarily anti-Facebook, although there are several such movements out there. I’m not saying it’s “the devil’s favorite book,” as some people do. 
I even believe this general rule: If it makes you happy and isn’t hurting someone else, I’m happy for you. 
I’m just saying (especially to those who want to convert me) it’s actually possible to live a complete, fulfilling life without Facebook. Or Farmville.
Over the years I’ve become close to joining Facebook on occasion, but then I usually read a news story about yet another loss of privacy related to the social-media site. It was probably around 1984 when I read George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four,” but I still remember how scared I was of the secret surveillance, deception and mind control that I assumed people would always try to avoid.
As Jodie Foster said Sunday at the Golden Globe Awards: “Privacy: Someday, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.”
Then there’s the Facebook time-suck, as it’s called. Americans spend an average of 90 hours a month on Facebook and watching TV, which is a much, much bigger time-suck. Those are some of the same people who “don’t have time” to read newspapers, cook dinner, exercise, call friends, clean their houses, get enough sleep, go to the theater, visit museums, take road trips, see a doctor, write letters, read books, volunteer, vote, walk their dogs or play catch with their kids. 
I am certainly not above wasting time, but I do try to avoid something that’s pretty much guaranteed to do so. I killed two hours on Pinterest before I learned I simply shouldn’t even type the word Pinterest into my Internet browser unless in bed with the flu.
It seems that more than ever, the time-suck has been explained away to me as, “Well, I don’t post much anymore on Facebook. I just read other people’s posts.” So you’ve joined this “amazing online community,” but you’re just using it to just read what others contribute? I’m not sure that sounds like communal friendship.
I haven’t even mentioned the over-sharing via status updates that include bodily functions, obvious pleas for attention, trite sayings, drunken typing, downright lies or political rants. 
It makes me think of Charles Schulz’s character Linus saying so wisely, “There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”
I am probably at my closest point to joining Facebook, and it’s simply because I realized I am doubling the work of daughter’s Girl Scout leader, who has to send stuff she posts on Facebook to me, the only troop mom not on it. I’ve been a Girl Scout leader, so I sure don’t want to add to a volunteer’s burden.
And I don’t want to be like a 6-year-old who says she hates lima beans but has never actually eaten a lima bean. So if I join, I will try to keep an open mind.
There have been studies to determine whether Facebook usage is a true addiction; studies about whether Facebook makes people fat; studies to determine how long, on average, someone who “quits Facebook” is truly able to stay off the site. Supposedly many return within 24 hours. 
The whole not-being-on-Facebook thing apparently has already come full circle, according to a recent article published in the Journal of New Media and Society. Although being on Facebook at first meant you were a “hipster,” now not having an account is a status symbol. I’ve apparently gone from geek to cool, kind of like all the other non-drug-users from high school, simply by trying to avoid addiction.
I just hope if I join Facebook for Girl Scouts, it doesn’t become a gateway drug for huffing Reddi-Wip.