I’m pretty sure I have just reached a new low point in my life. Whilst nursing my hangover and avoiding writing this article, ironically I somehow ended up browsing the profile of the person I kissed last night on Facebook.
This isn’t for any reason in particular, partly doing the ‘do I or don’t I want to sleep with him’ analysis and partly comparing myself to other girls in his pictures. But none of that justifies why I just spent a good five minutes of my life looking at photos of someone I already know and see pretty frequently in the real world. It’d be more helpful to procrastinate by staring out the window at the activities of the nuns who live opposite me. Yet, I am finding it perfectly natural instead to spend my time judging someone that I already know based on their Facebook profile. I think of myself as a generally well-rounded, practical, sensible person and yet Facebook stalking has become an embarrassingly large part of my life; shaping my perspective on all the relationships I have with those around me.
Out of the just over 1000 friends I have on Facebook, I have probably ‘Facebook stalked’ at least 800 of them in the years since I first thought it was a good idea to get an account. If on average that’s about twenty minutes per person (working on a basis of a quick flick over the girl you had a DMC with last night, to the ex or that person you keep as a friend because you enjoy judging them, and not even starting on the stalking of the revs photos…) that comes to about eleven days without eating or sleeping.
“Facebook is literally only around so I can cry wank over my ex girlfriend’s malia 08 photos in the dark at 4am” exclaims the very unhealthy attitude of one student in York whose emotional outpourings were then circulated on Twitter gossip profile @OverheardYork. Tragic as it sounds, we are in no position to judge.
Don’t pretend that you’ve never drunkenly come home from a night out and sat there stalking your ex by judging the various physical dimensions of their new (whether real or imagined) romance. I’ve made various excuses for this particular unhealthy Facebook habit including: “it’s fine we’ll still be friends,” or “we have so many mutual friends we can’t just break all contact.” But when it comes down to it, Facebook and Twitter have just become another way of feeding the insecurities we have after a break up; whether it’s keeping a constant eye on your ex, or just making sure you put up lots of photos of yourself looking incredible with some very attractive people. It does about the same for your self-esteem as watching the Victoria’s Secret fashion show on repeat every day would do, or for a male equivalent, having the front cover of Men’s Health plastered all over the walls of every room in your house, whilst you are unable to leave because you broke both your legs in a tragic banana-peel related incident.
Social Networking has developed the strange ability to manipulate our emotional security, personal well-being and self-respect. Not even starting on the worry that potential employers, dates and our mothers will be judging us based on our Facebook or Twitter updates. Finding a balance between totally fearing technology and refusing to have any contact with the outside world, other than the occasional trip to Willow, and plastering your entire life into the public sphere, is a difficult task. It can rule your life and relationships to the extent that you find ‘evidence’ for everything (from creating an idyllic day-dream about that absolutely perfect guy you met on your first night of freshers, to how everyone you slept with in the last six months is now obsessed with one of your friends). Rationally we should spend very little time worrying about adding or deleting people as friends or updating our statuses, and yet there is nothing at all rational about how we view ourselves and our emotional relationships.
Needless to say, we do not need a virtual world to push us over the emotional edge but unfortunately, nothing looks set to change as long as the reign of Social Networking holds out. Then again, I’m sure that all the love-letter writing and analysing that our Grandparents did was liable to becoming just as unhealthy and I’m certain that in the future, our children will find something else to cry over whilst they drink wine and eat chocolate biscuits on their own.
Now, please excuse me while I consider how to rationalise my current dependency on Facebook and Twitter, whilst also attempting to track down the page of my last term fling’s new love affair… bloody privacy settings.