Confessions of a Facebook Addict

Hi. My name is 7.11 and I am (afraid I'm about to become) a Facebook addict.

I'm glued to my phone's 4-inch retina display and it’s not making me (and the hubby) happy. It’s freaky, if you come to think of it: me checking FB by the hour (sometimes by the half-an-hour), poking, lingering, scrolling down, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing.

What's freakier still is, I'm not even enjoying it as there's practically nothing about Facebook that feels exciting anymore. The feed is boringly predictable; everyone pretty much sticks to his posting themes and patterns. And yet. I would check my Facebook feed with the clockwork routine of a prison sentinel, making sure that no status update has gone past the radar.

The menacing habit of regularly checking on Facebook has grown into some sort of a weird psycho-physiological reflex:

traffic slowing down, check Facebook; food/friend/my turn taking 1-minute long, check Facebook; stuck in a paragraph I can’t quite get right, check Facebook; zoning out in a humdrum meeting, check Facebook; book getting nauseous or boring, check Facebook; webpage taking 30-second long to upload, check Facebook. Any lull is practically an invitation to check Facebook.

All this is making me want to puke at myself.

It also makes me want to puke at some people on Facebook.

It’s really not their fault, this nausea I get when I scroll down my news feed. It's me and my occasional hyper-sensitivity to (what feels to me as) tasteless status updates, the (downright or humble-) bragging, pontificating, intellectualizing, or complaining.

I really shouldn't have a problem or a care with other people's updates especially if I’m not even the object/subject, but somehow I get affected. And I catch myself every so often treading the path of the judgmental and the scrooge. The scrooge is when I simply just refuse (in my head only of course) to indulge some people with their need to be admired and seen in a particular way. I mean, how hard can that be? It's a natural human need and I for one crave these, too. It's all funny, if you really think about it. And yet.

To me, this only means one thing: I've lost my so-called sense of humor. You see that a lot in cranky, unhappy, sanctimonious old people (old being a matter of state of mind).

At 35, there are only a few other things that scare me more. And the longer I linger on Facebook, the harder I get taunted by this scary realization: I'm losing that underrated life survival skill.

People say Facebook isn’t real life. I don't totally agree. If you are on it, Facebook is a real sphere in your life the same way that your job is. Facebook takes up space and energy in your real world. There is no distinction in terms of real-ness between the experiences and roller coaster emotions you get from Facebook and the ones you get from 'physical' social interactions.

For addicts, Facebook can easily become a negative space and energy in our lives. Facebook puts us in the middle of fifty conversations at any given time. That can really fuck up the psyche.

And unless you're not just an addict but a masochist as well, then by all means stay on Facebook and enjoy the feast. But if you care for your sense of equilibrium, calm and youth, my suggestion is we run away, even for just a short time while we try to regain our sense of humor back.