facebook

In 2010 I set up a facebook account to communicate with mentor co-ordinators across the Loddon Mallee region. Doesn’t work. Last year in France my room-mate—Frank, policeman, 51—convinces me it has value. I give it another try but quickly tire of its banality. I’m just unsocial and a dud networker. Although 901 million people use it, I’m one of many millions to switch off.

If I hold out, will I lose touch with younger relatives who use facebook as their primary means of communication?

Facebook will continue its relentless pursuit of us because if enough of us tune out it becomes a postal system that delivers only to one side of the street. Thus it loses some of its facility and people will spend less time with it; it will sell fewer ads.

I am, however, interested in the notion that people already define themselves, and have different types of relationships, depending on the media they use as their primary means of communication: letters—longhand or typed, email, SMS (Send a Message to Someone) or facebook.

Resistance for some of us is generational, not driven by unease with the technology. I no longer write letters by hand. I occasionally use my electronic amanuensis to scribe letters I stick stamps on and drop in the red box outside the milk bar, but predominantly I email.

I don’t want a deluge of email. I'm in touch with friends and colleagues and they know how to find me. I already struggle to keep up with them.

I don’t want another medium to check frequently. Facebook is a chore, added to a life without any added hours in the day.

I don't want the obligation of shooting the breeze with someone I met briefly 12 years ago who stumbles over me while searching for validation in numbers.

I neither want nor need new ‘friends’. ‘Friending’ is superficial. When I write to someone, I write to that person, not a group, and I’m taking the time to sit down to do it. The act has meaning.

Doing facebook means not doing something else. Like life.

Rock on.