THE WONDERS AND THE PERILS OF FACEBOOK.
About twelve months ago, I read an article about Second Life – a website where people created virtual images for themselves and were having affairs and leading glamorous lifestyles - far removed from their ordinary lives. I was shocked to read the devastating effects it was having on families and didn’t even log on to have a look.
For at the time I was going through my Facebook obsession – as were many of my friends and colleagues. Logging on excitedly to see who had added you as a friend, or who was the latest person to have “poked” you!
Twelve months on though, having seen lots of breakups and separations announced on Facebook, lots of family occasions marked that perhaps should be more private – and experiencing a girl stalking my husband incessantly, as well as a part of my life coming back to haunt me that disappeared long ago – I am about to delete my Facebook account, along with dozens of my friends.
It starts innocently enough – you set up an account and your friends add you. People you work with, people you see in the pub.
I enjoyed it – I was never much one for the games and applications but it was fun to see what your friends were up to – when one friend went to Australia for a month, it was good to keep up with what she was doing and seeing photos of what she had done the day before, rather than talking about it with her for hours afterwards – but that’s just it – because I knew what she’d been doing, and because I’d seen all the photos – I still haven’t had that catch up – haven’t sat for hours talking about her experience and about meeting her granddaughter – because I was there with her – on Facebook – I thought that was a positive thing – I hadn’t missed her at all – but really it just shows how social networking can replace friendships.
Then my brother in law joined – all of a sudden I was worried what I was writing on walls , in case he spied on it and told my husband – not that I was doing anything wrong – it just felt intrusive that I could see who I was sending messages to and what they said. He also felt that he had to ask me if I’d noticed his ex fiancé was on there – I hadn’t, but once I knew I found myself checking if he was talking to her or not.
A friend started having roses sent to her by a bloke that wasn’t her husband – when I asked her who Adam was, she went bright red and said “How do you know?” – Facebook can be a dangerous place.
Soon you notice that many of the applications lead to dating elements of the site and tell you that seven people have crushes on you – whats all that about – Im happily married to my husband and have been for fourteen years thank you – but other people can be tempted by this and add friend they don’t know start chatting and suddenly you read “Jenny and Phil have ended their relationship”
I became obsessed with looking for “friends” – I sat for hours at night skimming through lists of friends and adding them as my own.
Why? I hadn’t even given these people a second thought for years but this computer application was turning my life upside down – I’m a nosey person but it was bringing out an obsession with the past and with other people’s lives that could become unhealthy.
But when I had first hand experience of the devastating effect that Facebook could start was when I really started to look into it.
My husband joined but didn’t check his profile regularly – so he says – then someone added him as a friend and he asked me to show him what to do. When we got onto his profile there were several messages from a girl he used to work with and some comments on his wall :
“Hey Love Machine, when we going to get together”
“Hey there – why haven’t you met up with me yet – when we going out”.
This girl was openly and relentlessly pursuing my husband online – I was hurt and felt cheated on.
She had always been flirtatious with my husband and offhand with me – we all know the type. It caused problems in our relationship – I felt that for her to feel that she could do that, she must have felt close to my husband – he denied all knowledge, but under threat, I doubted his integrity.
I also felt foolish – all those people I knew who were on both our Facebook accounts could see what she was up to – and no-one had thought to tell me, but I could imagine lots of conversations going on between friends.
It was a tough time – and it opened my eyes to the negatives of Facebook.
A sister of my friend has lost two babies – she put the anniversary of one of the deaths as her Facebook status – such a private moment – why would you do that?
Someones mother died – she wrote “Charlotte is feeling very sad – RIP Mum” – another private moment. Why share it with the world in such a brutal way?
And for me – a “friend” added from my past – now married to my ex – the curiosity overcame me and I accepted her. She took me back to a time which I really didn’t want to remember. A time when I was so in love with her now husband that I was prepared to take an attempt on my own life to keep him – and she knew that. She kept sending me messages, telling me about all the people I knew when I lived there and what they were doing. She added happily family photos of her, and my ex and their children – I didn’t want to know it, I didn’t need to know it – but Facebook had made me confront it again – I had dealt with it and put it away years ago – how dare she bring it all back. I needn’t have accepted her , I know – but just by popping up in my inbox, that name had forced me to think about my past.
So then I started to consider deleting my account and as I talked about it I realised how many more people were doing the same.
A colleague deleted his account the other day because a girl from school had contacted him and had tried to rekindle a relationship from years ago – one that was doomed for failure then and he didn’t want to be stalked by her or for her to know everything he was doing and where she might bump into him.
A woman on the school playground has deleted her account because she put on for everyone to see that she was having a boob job – only to find that her employer could see it and so did her next door neighbours and everyone was making comments about her and making rude jokes – she was gutted.
Employers are another thing – I heard that someone who works for the same local authority as me has been disciplined because they put details of a meeting on their Facebook status.
Another employer I know has a Facebook “spy” – she has an account and is friends with people and feeds back to the bosses what is going on outside work that could affect this persons job – off sick with a migraine but playing quizzes on Facebook – not the done thing.
And the new layout of Facebook makes it even worse – if you don’t click the privacy setting, something you write on a “friends” wall, could be distributed to your friends, their friends, friends of friends………………..
I will be sad not be in touch with some people – there are friends I have been in touch with who it has been fun to catch up with and chat to. It’s also been lovely to see photographs of their families and learn what has happened to them over the years.
But if I really wanted to be back in touch with them – I could have found them anyway - I could have visited them and seen their children – written them a letter and told them about my life – I don’t need Facebook to help me do that – I can create my own happy times – and if I delete my Facebook page, I may miss the fact that the bloke from school that I fancied so much is eating a fish finger sandwich – but I will never have to be unexpectedly confronted with demons from the past.
Kate Thompson
March 2009
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