Recently I had a conversation with a friend that got me to thinking. The conversation focused on technological advances in general and Facebook in particular. This friend, who I will not name, is adamantly opposed to Facebook, which is his absolute right. But it was his reason for being opposed that I felt was a bit–maybe not odd, because I’ve heard the same argument from other people before–but perhaps a bit short-sighted or even false.
His argument for not using Facebook was simple: People lived just fine before Facebook was invented, so I can, too.
And the truth is that he is absolutely correct. People survived just fine without Facebook and his refusal to jointhe site will, in no way, impede his ability to survive or even to enjoy life. That wasn’t my problem. My problem was that he is looking at the whole thing all wrong.
First of all, Facebook wasn’t created as a necessity of life. It was created as a way to help people keep in touch with others and even connect with those with whom they have lost touch. And it does both of those things very well.
I grew up in a very small town in northeastern Arizona. After graduation, my high school class (94 students) scattered across the United States and even around the globe. I myself spent 2 years in southern Chile, several moved to Phoenix, and others moved all over the place. I quickly lost touch with all but a very few of my friends. This was not because I didn’t want to communicate with them, it was just that communication took a lot of time.
Could I live without knowing where they were or what they were up to? Sure. And I did. For several years after I returned from Chile, my life went on just fine. I kept in contact with the few friends I could still find and heard rumors about other ones through the town gossip line (I mentioned that the town was small, right?). But I still wondered how some of them were doing and wished that there was a way to contact them.
A few years before the Facebook revolution, I attended a reuinion, where I met some of my old friends. It was so great to see them, but the short hours afforded at the reunion weren’t enough to really re-connect. I got a few email addresses, but that was it.
Then came Facebook and viola! Suddenly many of my high school friends, along with several of my Chilean friends and many others friends that I’ve made over the years, can be found in a single, easy-to-use space. I can chat with them, find out what is going on in their lives, and even see pictures. On top of that, it reminds me when i need to send out birthday cards or other important events. And friends can invite me to reunions and get togethers, which are always fun.
Are there problems? Yes. I hate the Facebook games and couldn’t care less if my friend John wants my help in on his virtual farm, I’m never going to do it. I sometimes worry about security and set my security to a very high level to protect myself as much as possible. Sometimes I get invites from people I don’t know or really don’t want to reconnect with. And some of my friends posts are … well, let’s just say that they are less interesting than others. But those are minor inconveniences that I gladly put up with for the value that I feel I get from Facebook.
But the good and bad of Facebook are actually not the point of this post. They can be argued left and right forever and the argument will always come down to personal opinion, so it’s kind of pointless. What I want to point out is that, regardless of how much I enjoy Facebook, I have never considered it necessary for a happy life. Does reconnecting with my friends make me happy. Absolutely. Could I be happy without them? Absolutely, though I would (and did) miss some of the friends that I now get to hear from on a regular basis.
And that’s my first problem with what my friend said: Surviving and being happy before or after Facebook aren’t really the point. Facebook is just a way–an optional way–to enhance life, and that is it.
So my first objection is a simple technicality–the statement that people lived just fine before Facebook is irrelevant as it was never meant to be more than an enhancement to life. The real question is whether people feel that their lives have been enhanced by Facebook. That goes back to personal preference and, to a large degree, experience and I’m fine with that.
But as I thought about my friend’s statement, another thought struck me: can’t you say that exact same thing about pretty much ANY technology? TV? check. Cars? check. Microwaves? check. Modern farming equipment? sure, that, too.
See, that is the problem that has troubled me since my discussion with my friend. Personally, I don’t honestly care one way or the other whether he uses Facebook or not, but it reflects an attitude I think is problematic: the “reject all change because the past was just fine” attitude.
As someone who works in technology, I see this all the time. A short time ago a user at work actually accused me of not doing my job because my team changed things too much. It didn’t matter to him that over 95% of our user base not only approves of the changes but has commented many times on how much more productive those same changes make their jobs. “Things were working just fine before,” this particular employee said, so to him the changes were a bad thing because why would you change something that is working?
A couple of nights ago Jenna and I discussed this same idea regarding pregnancy and birth. In her most recent class, she is learning about child development and the class got into a debate over how much the medical industry should be involved in childbirth. One of the students all but called all mothers who do not have natural births in their own home irresponsible (she also claimed that when she had children, she was sure she would find a comfortable position to pop them out and that there was NEVER a good reason to induce labor). That bothered Jenna quite a bit and we discussed it late into the night.
As humans I think we have a tendency to romanticize the past while ignoring the hard facts of that time. Today it seems to be in fashion to idolize the 1950s—especially the 1950s portrayed in I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver, where the husband and wife slept in separate beds and they couldn’t show a toilet on national television (dead serious, check out this little factoid on Snopes.com). But we forget that there were serious problems in the ’50s. Racism and abuse were rampant, women had few rights and less respect, much of the world economy was still reeling from World War II, communism had half the world terrified of the other half and neighbors terrified of neighbors, smoking was encouraged by doctors and The Flintstones, and so on.
Even worse, a lot of people seem to be getting nostalgic for the days of the Founding Fathers, when disease killed off most people before they reached what we now consider middle age, people were often hung for minor offenses, and slaves were a regular part of life for a lot of Americans.
Please don’t think I’m suggesting that things like Facebook or other technologies have anything to do with solving those kinds of problems. They don’t. But my point is that it is foolish to think of the past as having many advantages over modern day life. Are there problems today? Yes. Are they worse than the past? Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the time I lean towards “not.” The Dark Ages, for example, just seem to be a bummer all around except for a handful of people who happened to be born into the extremely inbred breed of royalty—and then they were lucky only if they were male.
So whether you Facebook or not really isn’t a big deal to me. True, you will probably hear more from me if you do Facebook, but I can appreciate your decision not to. But please don’t use the excuse that the world got along just fine without it. Truth is, life on this planet got along pretty well without all of us as well. But I don’t think we want to return to those days, do we?
