LIKE This? Facebook Self-Sabotage

I’m about ready to un-friend Facebook.

Think about it: if you had a friend who prattled on relentlessly about other people and their lives – every gory, finicky detail – wouldn’t you get sick of it too?

Yes, we’ve all heard Facebook trashed and blamed for the downfall of mankind before. Social networking sites have been targeted for systematically denigrating the state of human relationships, atrophying our communication skills, and slackening our interpersonal intuitions irrevocably. And that’s just a start.

But the focus of this article is not on how our new online mode of existence is destroying our relationships with others. I want to write about how we’re letting this new medium destroy the relationship we have with ourselves.

You sit down on your bed, exhausted after a long afternoon. When, in days of yore, one might have spent the well-deserved break reading the newspaper, perusing a book, or flipping through the channels on that now archaic talking-box, today we have different relaxation rituals. Laptops or iPhones are adroitly whipped out of crisp cases, and downtime is often spent scrolling numbingly through other people’s lives.

Let’s be quite honest. How does perusing pictures of your ex’s successful new relationship or job make you feel? Her vacation looked awesome, didn’t it? Feel like you missed out on that party you skipped because you had a paper—looks like you did. And, all those grad school acceptance letters your college buddies are receiving, while you’re still anxiously awaiting your own—makes you feel downright peachy, don’t it?

Now, I’m not accusing you of being an emotional miser. I do believe that someone is capable of being truly and whole-heartedly happy for another person. While it is a challenging emotional feat, especially for those things we most achingly and earnestly desire for ourselves, we can find the strength and faith within to smile sincerely for another, quietly reassuring ourselves that success is not a limited commodity, and life no race.

But it’s not easy. And choosing, of our own volition, to constantly and religiously expose ourselves to the intimate details of others’ lives seems, quite frankly, to be ruthless self-sabotage. A sure way, if ever there was one, to torpedo the battle for inner contentedness and satisfaction with self.

We all know: Facebook is the most efficient way to track and trace the movements of others. We spend hours of our own day, during class, evenings, or otherwise, monitoring the updates, accomplishments, tribulations, and milestones of other people. Privacy having become a seeming relic of the past, we have become a generation of followers.

Something else we all know: comparing yourself to other people is a foolproof way to avoid happiness. Google any study on happy people. Perceived inequality and an unwavering focus on others is one bona fide way to assure you’ll never become one of them. Being happy with what you’ve got is a message pervading our earliest childhood memories and neatly moralizing fairytales.

It’s what your mom told you that day you came home crying because she had prettier shoes, or he could throw the ball much farther. And it’s what you began telling yourself, what you had to begin telling yourself, when you got older, and she got the job you wanted. He got the girl you wanted. She got the internship you wanted. The marriage you wanted. The car. The kids. The recognition.

We all stumble upon life’s seeming unfairness at one point or another. It’s the grappling with this recognition that takes time; the learning how to deal with this reality that often takes years, and maybe even the rest of our lives, to swallow.

Why, then, have we rushed to embrace a pastime that barrages us constantly with grueling comparison? Why are we so willing, and wanting, to challenge ourselves incessantly in this manner? Facebook, unabashed in its goal to press our curious little noses up against the glass of others people’s lives, can easily create an aching, throbbing dissatisfaction with self. It is a dissatisfaction potent enough, I dare say, to affect even the most secure, confident, self-possessed individuals.

But it goes further. We don’t only trot along dutifully after other people’s lives, Facebook posts and status updates serving as the faithful breadcrumbs. We have let the incessant focus on others infect our very self-definition.

Proof: no one goes on Facebook to peruse his or her own profile—unless it is to ensure that what other people see is acceptable and up-to-date. We take pictures, post-statuses, even select our own ‘likes’—with other people in mind. What will they think when they see this? When I post this? When I comment on that? Will they think me sophisticated, savvy, snarky, cool? Facebook has not only trained us to hungrily scrounge after the lives of others; it has changed the way we view ourselves. By increasingly defining ourselves based upon what others will think, say, and comment, we have tacitly agreed to cede a precious piece of our personal autonomy.

Why have we voluntary agreed to subject ourselves to this tyranny? Why do we continue scrolling and clicking, when we know it’s not good for us? When we know it won’t make us happy?

Many answers could be given. Curiosity. Distraction. Sincere interest. Go ahead—give me an answer. Feel free to be polemical. Wax poetic. But, while you do, just remember—Facebook doesn’t need your passionate defenses. It’s doing quite well on its own.

Instead of an insufficient answer, I pose a question much bigger than any pragmatic, defensive, or sheepish explanation you could offer me: is it worth it?

Now, I am not so puritanical, hypocritical, or naïve as to think this article will convince you to shut down your Facebook account right here and now. Nor do I think it necessarily should (I personally don’t plan on it). Facebook has many excellent qualities, primary of which is your ability to take an interesting article, press like, and ignite a dynamic, important conversation (go for it).

But what I do hope this article inspires is a serious appraisal, at least, of how our obsession with the lives of others has affected our own lives. The constant, grating comparison available at our fingertips has the ability to erode anyone’s self-confidence, contentedness, and ultimate happiness with self.

So, be an informed Facebook user. At least realize, recognize, and name the recipe for dissatisfaction we are voluntary imposing on ourselves.

If you’re going to smoke, at least read the surgeon’s warning label, right?