Social Networks: The Experiment
leila April 12th, 2008
It started out as a twenty-four hour experiment: did I have enough self-control to not log onto Facebook for one day?
The idea was borne out of several conversations I’d had with friends, one stemming from a recent article published in Newsweek, about sites like Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube, that this generation of youth use to document their lives online.
Relative to others, I’d thought my interaction with Facebook was minimal. But I’d noticed that, regardless of my infrequent usage, something clicked after I read the article (see previous post).
Social networking sites can be powerful tools. Without Facebook, for example, I wouldn’t be able to catch a daily glimpse of my sister’s life, who lives an ocean apart in San Francisco. Whenever I visit my hometown, it’s the easiest way to reconnect with an old high school friend, whose constant email address changes I can’t keep up with, for our yearly catch-up dinners. A friend in London messaged me on Facebook last week, bouncing off ideas about her master’s thesis.
But the article’s argument resonated with me. The author argues that these sites have cultivated a generation of youth more self-absorbed than those past; that today’s youth are “masters of their own images,” and can compare or scrutinize their images with those of their friends, with remarkable ease.
Facebook gives me a lens into the details of my friends’ and acquaintances’ lives that at times seems a bit too intimate. And sometimes, exposure to those details lead to all sorts of personal tests. When confronted with friends’ behavior that I didn’t agree with, would I judge them? If I saw photos of a party to which I hadn’t been invited, would it sting more than if I had heard about it in passing?
As a Bahá’í, I’ve been raised with the notion of concentrating on refining my own character, rather than dwelling on others’ faults. But I found that I was allowing Facebook invite all sorts of unhelpful habits to my own growth.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Son of Bahá’u’lláh and His appointed successor, was once asked “How shall I overcome seeing the faults of others— recognizing the wrong in others?” He replied:
I will tell you. Whenever you recognize the fault of another, think of yourself! What are my imperfections?—and try to remove them. Do this whenever you are tried through the words or deeds of others. Thus you will grow, become more perfect. You will overcome self, you will not even have time to think of the faults of others…
(Star of the West, Volume 8, No. 10, page 138)
How would I be able to focus on removing my own imperfections, if I couldn’t help but see others’ on Facebook?
And so, one morning, I decided: I wouldn’t visit Facebook for twenty-four hours.
It turned out to be surprisingly easy. So easy, in fact, that a week later, I’ve easily stuck with it. This is what I’ve learned.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá speaks of those who “renounce themselves, forget their own opinions, cast aside personalities and are thinking of the welfare of others,” saying:
Whosoever has lost himself, has found the universe and the inhabitants thereof! Whosoever is occupied with himself is wandering in the desert of heedlessness and regret! The master-key of self-mastery is self-forgetfulness. The road to the palace of life is through the path of renunciation.
(Star of the West, vol. XVII, p. 348)
What was happening, instead—and many of my friends have confessed this themselves—was that, by being exposed to unnaturally intimate details of each others’ lives, with all its ramifications, it was easy to become occupied with the superficial. What I wanted was to retain a sense of “self-forgetfulness,” and to let my thoughts and actions turn more toward “the welfare of others,” rather than be lost, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, in “heedlessness and regret.”
So yes, I may log in to see what photos someone has tagged of my faraway sister, and I’ll send personal messages to friends who contact me. It’s nice to know that my virtual persona still exists out in the ether, for those to find me if they need to. I’ve found that social-networking sites, used in moderation, are incredibly useful.
But what I’ve also discovered is that, by reducing my activity on Facebook, I’ve gradually shifted my thinking. They say ignorance is bliss, and it’s true: ignorance of the minutiae of other people’s lives is a blissful thing, and a completely underrated aspect of our parents’ generation. But it’s also shifted my thoughts to something more positive and productive. Shoghi Effendi eloquently counsels us in this regard:
The more we search for ourselves, the less likely we are to find ourselves; and the more we search for God, and to serve our fellow-men, the more profoundly will we become acquainted with ourselves, and the more inwardly assured. This is one of the great spiritual laws of life.
(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, February 18, 1954)
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- Arts & Culture , Baha'i Concepts , Society
- Comments(3)
This is so true, I’ve tried the social network in moderation thing as well and found that there’s a lot less pressure on me to be someone else, I can be myself, be happy with myself and the best part of it, I save a lot of time by not logging into these networks so often. To be honest, there’s not a lot of things to do on a social network once your mindset shifted from “I need to log on” to “social networks can be useful”, but we don’t really need them.
I’d rather spend that time reading interesting blogs, at least I learn something from it!
I quit facebook 10 days ago. I wrote a snippet about it.
http://artificialsoundandlight.tumblr.com/post/30920754
I think that Facebook and MySpace are (generally) a different animal than services like Flickr and YouTube — or blogging for that matter — in that they are built around the sharing of ideas. Facebook is more about, as you said, personal documentation.
Thanks for your comments!
It’s a habit to be developed, to be sure. I find it helpful to go back to the quotations I included in the article to remind me of what’s important in the first place. There’s something about being in your twenties that brings about all sorts of “finding yourself” issues– I’m not sure whether this is an artificial social construction (remember that popular book a few years ago, The Quarterlife Crisis?), or whether it’s something that we genuinely go through as we’re figuring out what we want to do, who we want to be, and what kind of life we want to lead. That, and, as each year seems shorter than the last, we’re confronted with questions of mortality and, hence, what kind of impact we will make on the world.
Social networking sites, in my opinion, intensify the situation. When you’re confronted with others’ successes and failures (jobs, graduate school, marriages and relationships– flourishing or failed–, and other life developments) on an intimate, daily basis, I think it only naturally leads to a sort of self-examination. It can be inspiring (e.g., “Person X spends their free time teaching children’s classes, how cool; maybe I should think about spending my Saturdays more productively.”). Likewise, it has the potential to be negative (e.g., “Person Y got into ___ University, why didn’t I?” or “Hmm, looks like John and Mary are no longer in a relationship.”)
It is a matter of perspective and mental maturity, certainly. But sometimes I think there’s something unnatural about putting oneself “out there” to the degree that social networks let us. Maybe we need to be more moderate in how we use them.
As a footnote: Being a Baha’i solves a lot of these questions, and every time I look back to the Baha’i Writings–such as the ones I included in the article– I feel a sense of immense clarity!