I'm not sure that I would've received so many thoughtful birthday wishes if Facebook didn't exist. Many of my Facebook friends are people who I don't see on a regular basis and we use Facebook to stay in better contact. These are the same people who probably wouldn't remember my birth date if it weren't for the digital reminder that Facebook enables folks to see.
There were some people that I expected to see a post/message from. Some posts/messages that I received came from people who I least expected. Without an obvious action, it's easy to think that someone isn't paying much attention to your page. Aside from the 3rd party applications that supposedly reveals "top friends" who viewed my Facebook profile the most, how else would I measure that activity on my page?On Facebook, unless someone posts directly on your page, likes a post/comment, comments or sends a friend request/message, one doesn't really know who's spending time on their profile page. One also doesn't know just how thoroughly an individual peruses their page or the length of time spent. Over time, I've observed some communication patterns between my Facebook friends and myself.
I use Facebook for the following 10 purposes:
- To get/remain in contact with the people I know or newly meet
- To witness how people "freeze time and moments" and share pictures publicly
- To learn about some of the interests/adventures that people have
- To find out what people deem as important and newsworthy
- To see details about events
- To share my blog and some insight on my personal being
- To monitor/detect behavioral patterns of my "real-life" friends and family
- To kill time when I'm bored
- To communicate with people that I don't hang out with regularly or at all
- To be exposed to new creativity and information
I love the access and instantaneous nature of Facebook. The only problem I've had with it is what I allow. On numerous occasions, I've logged into Facebook with the intention of being online for a short duration; something like between 15-30 minutes. Right... I'm learning to be more honest with myself about the attention that I give to Facebook. I get caught up in it and the time flies when I do.
Knowing my own behavioral patterns on Facebook, I have to be reasonable with myself. If I have a busy agenda or I'm time constrained for some reason, I do not login to Facebook until my business is handled. Point blank. Exploring the Facebook community can be just as alluring as a Black Friday sale on payday.
My Facebook profile only represents about 25% of my true character. That's an estimate. When I was on Myspace a few years ago, I became infatuated with the amount of Myspace friends that I acquired. I had over 1500 people on my friend list. Of them, only 200 were actual acquaintances, friends, family and/or coworkers. My diligent desire to be courteous and respond to all those who posted and/or sent me messages regularly became overwhelming.
Why was I dedicating so much of my time sitting on my behind typing messages to strangers with no purpose? This question prompted me to shut down my MySpace account. I'm somewhere between the early majority and the late majority regarding Facebook. Due to my experience and what I allowed on MySpace, I wasn't very interested in joining Facebook initially.
Now that I do have a Facebook account, I monitor myself fairly well. I have exercised a lack of self-discipline with Facebook in the past, which has prompted me to "temporarily deactivate" my account twice. I did so because when I was in school and had finals, I'd login to Facebook unnecessarily and lose valuable study time. That was my fault with what I allowed and not Facebook's.
Whoever came up with the idea to make it challenging to delete our Facebook accounts was a reasonable thinker. I'm so glad that when I "got over" myself and the attitude I had with Facebook's existence, that I could simply log back in to retrieve my page as it was when I abandoned it. Laughing out loud!
People just need to be mature and responsible with the information that's shared. Facebook is only as bad as we let it be. It's such a great pathway to communicate otherwise.
We should enable ourselves to be aware of what we allow so that we can take the proper actions to change what we feel is necessary!
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