Sometimes we just need to log off!!

When Gary Lineker, the former England international wrote on twitter (18^th January 2013)  “I m leaving twitter for personal reasons. Thanks all, it made the news the next day here in the United Kingdom. Speculation was rife on all social media sites as to what those “personal reasons” were. To date, it seems that those reasons were simply that he had got tired of twitter.

A month ago (I reckon in a state of pique), I decided to take a few weeks off facebook. I had got to a point when I spent far too much time on the website not accomplishing much. So, I decided to deactivate my account. For anyone who has tried to do this, the button is well hidden. I couldn’t find it so I called on the services of Google. Upon finding it, I went through the “Spanish Inquisition” as to why I wanted to leave facebook. I managed to anyway and in a state of panic, I thought my life was about to come to an end. I had no online presence. How was I going to deal with this? Talking to a  friend of mine about my actions  she agreed “Sometimes I tell myself I need to get off FB and then I think - but who will know about me - like if am not on then I have been wiped off the face of the earth and from people's memories!”

Is this the way that some of us have become addicted to these sites? Well, the next day was different. For a start, my mobile phone was not clogged with message reminders. Apart from emails, there was nothing. It was quiet! It took me a while to get used not to check my phone for status updates but as time went on, I realised how liberating this was.

Status updates had become my bane. From the beginning, I didn’t care much what I wrote. After all this was a bit of fun. But then I realised that I was telling people all that I was doing day by day. The satisfaction came from the comments.  As I became good at writing these updates, the more comments came through. They became addictive and in a strange sort of way, a marker to how people were judging my intelligence or wit. If I updated and got less than 8 comments, I scrutinized the update. Where had I gone wrong? What could I have done better?

As a former media student and writer, I am aware of targeting audiences. My facebook friends list is well over a thousand people. A huge percentage of this, maybe 65%, is former school mates. The next largest group are people that I worked with in my home town Bristol. Then other smaller groups follow. So, cunningly, to increase my “ratings” I suppose, I targeted these updates. I suspected which updates would bring the most traffic on my site.

Status updates in my view are a form of diary entry. These are things that one should be comfortable to say in public. They are like a diary entry but one that you would like others to read about. One the most confusing writers I have ever read, Professor Noam Chormsky said that “Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.” In status updates we employ cognitive science by presenting information in such a way that influences intelligence and behaviour through how this information is presented. In writing these updates, I have always tried to be witty, in some cases betraying my journalistic instincts. 

The downfall to them however is the tendency for many people to become Laissez-faire while writing these updates forgetting one of the most fundamental things in our lives; privacy. When Mark Zuckerberg founder of facebook was speaking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco he said that privacy was no longer a "social norm". "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people …….That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." Well facebook has really eroded privacy where people are comfortable to update thus “Having a cuddle with the hubby having a glass of wine. Who knows what may follow ;)” (That sign at the end by the way means “wink”). Why would anyone want to know that one is having a cuddle with the hubby? I thought that is a private time with the hubby so better keep it private. And the hubby is sat there as this update is being uploaded? What we write and the photos we upload stay online forever even if they are “deleted”.

The loss of privacy for me had started becoming like a yoke, where I started feeling like I was living in a glass cage, having to get my life qualified by my online friends. I found that this created other problems. Relating to people like this blunts real relationships. Once I used to pick up the phone and call people up. With facebook, I felt like I was part of someone’s life because I looked through their photos and liked the baptism album. Matters came to a head when I rang up my daughters godfather only  to find out that  in the intervening months he had become a father again. I made things worse by calling his wife by another name!!

Facebook is an interesting portal I must say. I have many friends whom I wouldn’t have been able to keep in touch with as easily as I do these days. But there comes a time when we all must, at a certain point in time, switch off the damn thing and remember that people don’t exist online alone. It is good sometimes to log off! I certainly won’t get off facebook but it’s time to do things differently. And like Garry Lineker, just go away without necessarily arousing suspicion. In my language Luganda there is a saying that “Nazina obuluungi atuuka ekiseela naava mu ddiro” (Even a good dancer stops at the end of the night). Yes, I just got tired of the damn thing!!!