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Life is Better Without it: A Week Without Facebook


Graphic by Tim Yang '11

I hate that I love Facebook. This statement isn’t foreign to most high school students. Facebook connects me to the world, yet it distracts me from homework. It’s the definition of a win/lose situation.

Like most other high school students, I would consider myself pretty hooked on Facebook. So, I ventured to to see what life would be like — better or worse — without signing onto Facebook for one school week. From Monday afternoon to Friday afternoon, I didn’t touch anything Facebook related.

Let the experiment begin.

Before anyone reads any further, let me clear up one thing — this is not a column about me losing my mind for a week because I didn’t have Facebook. It’s the complete opposite. A week without Facebook was a gift from God.

Upon starting my personal test, I went to Facebook one last time Monday afternoon to change my status — I had to let everyone know why I was going to be “virtually dead” for one week. My farewell status update—which got 11 “likes” and six comments—was as follows:

“This is my farewell to Facebook until Friday afternoon. I’m going one school week cold turkey from Facebook. If you have anything important to tell me you can call or email me. Stay tuned for my column in Inklings about my experience. So begins my mission to avoid Facebook for a week. God bless me.”

But nobody ever called or emailed me.

That was the biggest problem I had throughout the week. I was lonely. Terribly lonely. Sure, the rules of my experiment still allowed me to text and instant message my friends, but I only talk to the same 20 or so close friends via those means of communication. I have 800–plus friends on Facebook—that’s a ton of lost entertainment.

That’s a week without posting anything on a group wall. That’s a week without seeing one newly uploaded photo.

So, without all of those superfluous people in my life, life lacked pizzaz. It lacked the Skittles “Taste the Rainbow” punch I search for in my daily life. I had no idea what taunting comments people wrote on my Floridian friend’s wall after the Heat lost their first game of the NBA season. I had no clue if I was invited to any Homecoming or Halloween parties until Friday afternoon when I checked Facebook. It was all a mystery.

But it was fine—looking back now, it was actually relieving. I was living my own life, rather than caring about everyone else’s lives. I was at a stage in this social experiment where surviving without Facebook was easy. Heck, it was enjoyable. I had cleansed my system—the future was looking good for me.

I was now enjoying the beauties of teenage life without incessant Facebook communication. I was doing things I hadn’t done in years. I was finishing my homework at home instead of finishing it before the first bell in the morning.

I actually watched a sporting event instead of tracking the box score on ESPN’s GameCast. Typically, I would just hit refresh my Facebook homepage, explore new photos or view recent status updates instead of standing up, walking to my television, turning on the game.

For instance, I would watch the time tick away at the Knicks game and say, “Alright, at the start of the half I’m going to watch the game.” But with Facebook in my life, I would get distracted and lose track of time on Zuckerberg’s brainchild. Before I knew it, the game was over and I was left feeling empty. Day three of my experiment was different. I stood up. I walked to my television. I turned on MSG. I saw the entire 48–minute game. Life was awesome. I wished the experiment wouldn’t ever have to end.

And when Friday came, I didn’t run home to go on Facebook—I didn’t even logon until nearly four o’clock. My friends wanted me to sign on to Facebook more than I actually wanted to. I didn’t want to go back to life with incessant page refreshes, notifications, status updates, and people. However, I knew that this was just not practical.

When I finally logged on to Facebook after five days, I was smacked with one new friend request, eight inboxes, four events, and nine notifications.

There was so much catching up to do.

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