 
Addiction, Thy Name Is Facebook
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By Michele Herenstein
Published on Thursday, December 27, 2007 -
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I have always thought that addiction referred to drugs, alcohol, and other vices that you couldn’t help but take advantage of, even while knowing the dangers involved therein. But I never once thought that something that in my mind should just be casual/once-in-a-while/when-I-have-a-free-moment-and-the-boss-isn’t-looking kind of fun could be so frustratingly addictive.
I’m always hearing about the renowned Facebook, the “coolest” thing to hit the Web since, well, since the last cool thing. I never felt the slightest desire to join, because I already use e-mail (a lot) which takes up a significant amount of my time as it is; I do admit enjoying my e-mail correspondence. Also, I have my profile listed on two dating sites, so I thought putting my profile on Facebook as well would totally overexpose me, and in the Orthodox Jewish world of New York, overexposure is the last thing I’m looking for.
I have often received e-mails from friends or acquaintances inviting me to join Facebook. In order to see members’ detailed profiles, members’ pictures, or see details of an event I’ve gotten invited to, I’d have to be a member of Facebook. I never joined, but I did wonder now and again what was so great about said site. I decided to conduct my own experiment to see what all the fuss was about, so last week I sent out an e-mail to over 40 friends/acquaintances asking if they were members of Facebook. If yes, what did they like about it, and if not, why not? I received a multitude of responses, and the consensus is that most people I know are in fact members of Facebook. I figured that I couldn’t really write a well-informed article about the site, including my opinions, both positive and negative, unless I knew more about it, so I finally joined. It was a very spontaneous decision that I may live to regret, because as of the morning after joining, I already felt slightly addicted. I never thought that would happen to me and certainly not within hours of joining, but there it is.
When I went to register on Facebook.com, I had to give basic information such as my name, birthday, e-mail address and a password. Within two minutes, I was officially Facebook’s newest member, although since Facebook gets 200,000 new users every day, I’m sure I wasn’t the “newest” for very long. Once on the site, I added a photo to get the full Facebook experience, because Facebook is the number-one photo site in the U.S., with over 60 million photos updated weekly.
The big attractions of Facebook are finding old friends and adding them to your network, as well as adding and communicating with close friends and acquaintances. Within hours of joining I had 5 friends in my network, and by that evening I had 25 friends. By morning I started getting friend invites from members who saw that I had joined, but I can honestly say I don’t recall where I even knew some of these “friends” from or even what they looked like, until I peeked at their photos.
Being someone’s friend on Facebook seems to have many different connotations. A friend can be someone you actually spend time with and talk to on the phone “off the ’Net,” a friend can be someone you see at shul every couple of weeks and say hello to in passing, or a friend can be someone you see at a party once a year. There seems to be no distinction on Facebook between best friend, good friend, or mild acquaintance. Everyone in your network seems to be your new BFF (best friend forever).
For those of you who are scratching your heads thinking, what exactly is Facebook, it is best described as “a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them. It is made up of many networks, each based around a company, region, or school.” The e-mail responses I received about Facebook showed much enthusiasm for the site, such as: “It basically consolidates the way I communicate with people.” “It is awesome. It connects friends all over the world.” “It seems like an experimental way to meet friends, dates, look up people, and be entertained.” “Oh, the ease of it all—no real need to ‘configure’ your page and glitter it up with HTML designs, etc. And it’s nice to find these old friends after all this time—I even found my namesake, who may be a lost relative.” “I like to network socially in general, and I’ve found that Facebook is significantly ahead of prior attempts (e.g., MySpace) in terms of ease of use and functionality. It is much better suited to reconnecting with people from my past that I’ve lost touch with over the years, and I like that. Plus, it still has a lot of potential that may be untapped, and they seem to be innovating all the time.”
Yoni Glatt, marketing director of Achva, joined for business reasons. “I joined the Facebook community to keep in closer interaction with the participants of our programs. We also use Facebook to create events and to gauge how many students we can expect on our trips, Shabbatons, etc. Since I started using Facebook, our numbers have gone up.”
Not everyone is an ardent supporter of Facebook. Said one non–Facebook fan, “I feel that if I want to speak to someone, I’ll simply call or e-mail that person rather than searching for them via Facebook. I also don’t feel the need to read through people’s pages to find out whom they are friends with or what they have been doing throughout the day.” Another detractor explains, “Unfortunately there are various links to commercial entities where Facebook is merely advertising corporate sponsors. This can be quite annoying—imagine thinking you are clicking on a link to do something nice for someone or hear about a service, and seconds later a connected site asks you to join a commercial service. It’s somewhat deceptive.” One critic simply states, “I am not on Facebook because I value my privacy.” Personally, I say bravo to that sentiment (never minding that I’m on Facebook now myself).
However, it seems to me that the critics are in the minority. Facebook, which was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, both Harvard dropouts, is now the second largest social network, behind MySpace. There are 58 million active users worldwide, and the number of users has been doubling every six months. Most astounding is that one half of the members use Facebook every day. In the summer of 2006, Yahoo offered to buy the site for $1 billion, but this offer was declined. In October of this year, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook for a 1.6% share of the company, valuing Facebook at $15 billion. So although there are skeptics regarding Facebook, it would seem that the site is an unqualified success.
Nevertheless, there are still concerns floating around about Facebook. Yes, it’s fun. And yes, it’s addictive. It can too easily become an obsession.
Word around town (from Facebook members) is that if you’re not on Facebook, then you are not in the know, and you might be missing out on events and friendships. It’s often used to invite people to Shabbat meals, however, to play devil’s advocate, why can’t that be done via e-mail? When I have the need to tell a friend something ASAP, I use e-mail if the phone is not an option at that time. Why open up my Facebook page to send a message (via inbox or posted on a member’s “wall”) which I could have easily sent by e-mail. What is it about a society that wants others to know their ongoing thoughts throughout the day? It seems that in this age of technology, there is no sense of people valuing their privacy. Yes, there are privacy options on Facebook, but from the little I’ve seen so far, most people don’t seem to take advantage of them.
I also feel there is a voyeuristic quality to the site; each member has the ability to see their friends’ profiles, a list (and usually photos) of their friends’ friends, which leads to looking further at those friends’ friends, and so on. I’ve been doing it myself, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. But do I want to spend valuable time each day seeing who is new to the site, who has posted the most outlandish photos, who has written the most bizarre comments, and who has invited me to take part in the newest trivia quiz? And do I really need to spend time puzzling over why there are profiles of dogs on the site (there really truly are!)? It’s one thing to add a friend to your network, but to add a dog (along with its photo) brings things to a new level of zaniness. An acquaintance of mine added her dog, Hug Izadog (get it?), to her network of friends, and now Hug has 20 friends of her own. I kid you not!
Another feeling I’ve had about Facebook is that it demystifies me. I am now just another “face” among millions of faces. How do I stand out among other members of Facebook? What makes me different? What makes me unique?
As I recently read in a women’s magazine (December ’07), “It gives the type A’s among us a concrete way to measure just how important we are. Now, no matter how popular you were (or weren’t) in high school, you can be affirmed by having a kajillion pals on Facebook—that is, more ‘friends’ than you can ever keep up with!” And as the article goes on to say, most women don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings, so they will write back to whoever writes to them, no matter that they often can’t remember the person who is writing to them, and no matter how busy they are, with no real time to spend responding to trivial messages.
Yet I have heard people tell of friends who “denied” someone being their friend on Facebook, which would obviously be insulting to anyone, no matter that they might not be close.
Does this sound like high school? It does to me. Yet, most of the people I interact with on Facebook have graduated high school many moons ago. I feel that in our society, no matter how old you are and how much you have matured, you still judge yourself, and are judged, based on how many friends you have, and how popular you might be. In school, we often needed to affirm to ourselves and others that we had a lot of friends. Why the need for this affirmation now, when most of us have grown up and have rid ourselves of the high school mentality? Why do we need to prove to virtual strangers and acquaintances how popular we are and how many friends we have?
Yet with all my questions, hesitations, and obvious uncertainty about Facebook, I admit to still being on the site a week after I joined. I did my research; I then could have taken my profile off the site and become a non-member as I was just over a week ago. But something is keeping me on. I suppose, like everyone else, I’m still curious about who will contact me out of the blue, as happened this morning, when an ex-boyfriend, now married, added me to his list of friends (sweet but odd—hey, that’s Facebook for you!).
Have I been checking the site every day? Pretty much. Am I addicted? Not yet, but I can see how this could happen. Will I stay on Facebook long term? I honestly don’t know, but every time I am added as a friend to someone’s network of friends, I’m less inclined to ditch the site. As I’ve said, it’s addictive.
Fun fact: Although Facebook was mostly used as a social contact for college students, the fastest growing demographic on the site is now users over the age of 30. That might explain why approximately 75 percent of the people I know are on the site. What I wonder as I write this is how many of you, after reading this article and gaining some knowledge about Facebook, will join as I did, possibly out of sheer curiosity, and then remain a member because you like it or because it is addictive. I think technology can be used in a positive way, but most definitely in a negative way, as well. It’s our choice how we use it, and I sincerely hope I remember these “wise words” as I currently use the site.
One last thought: If you do become a member, please add me as your friend. As “high schoolish” as it might be, it’s still fun, and we can all use a bit of that in our lives. So hey, maybe I’ll see you on Facebook!
Michele Herenstein is a freelance journalist who lives and works in New York City. She can be reached at michelesherenstein@hotmail.com. ♦
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