Delete Facebook?

I'm 31, I'm 34. pretty soon I'm 42
Loggin' in and zonin' out, isn't what I'd hoped to do...
The Paperboys, "After the First Time (paraphrased)

I've been entertaining thoughts of deleting my Facebook account.

I probably won't. I'm too much of a coward. Also, it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that isn't Facebook's fault, but mine.

If you tell me I've spent way too much time logged in there over the past two months, I won't argue. It's been a great way to keep in touch with people I no longer see in real life, and also people I do see. How many of those friends are artificial, though? Studies have shown that we talk to somewhere between six and ten percent of our Facebook friends, and even fewer are close friends offline.  I have no real wish to personally test that hypothesis. It's so much easier to live in pretend-friend world.

The other problem with Facebook, of course, is that it's a self-validation echo chamber. Post something: get likes and shares and comments and WOW, PEOPLE NOTICE ME. Don't get those likes and comments and shares and oh shit, what did I do, why does nobody care...You know what that is? It's high school. I couldn't wait to get out of high school...why am I back in it at 42?

I didn't notice this so much when I was working, spending nine hours a day in the company of actual living breathing human beings. I knew where I stood, then. Some of them liked me, most were indifferent, a couple outright hated me. I looked forward to seeing the likers and was indifferent abo0ut the indifferenters and I avoided the haters as best I could, and it was easier. Confined to a digital world, in many ways I find myself thrust back in time, to when I spent even more time a day in front of a screen than I do now, desperate to communicate, wielding words like weapons to hack through the isolation. Back then it was self-imposed. Now it's less so. There's not much of a difference.

Like I say, Facebook isn't a disease for me, it's a symptom. Most people can go days without logging in there; some of them go weeks or even months between posting anything. This is unimaginable to me...and it's only been seven years. What on earth did I do before Facebook came along? I honestly don't recall. Surely I didn't feel like this so often.

But...there are people I care very much about here. All in one place. To cut myself off from them, voluntarily, seems rash and foolhardy, like cutting the ropes on your parachute before you leave the plane.

So here's the deal. I'm going to try to cut back just a little. This is, I recognize, a recurrence of a bitchly horrible addiction I last battled in university. Once I'm employed again, this won't be such of a much, of course...but until then I simply have to lessen my dependance on this place. I've been saying for a bit now that I must divorce how others feel about me from my perception of myself.  Making a point not to notice 'likes' would probably be a good place to start.