The average person is said to spend 400 minutes on Facebook per day. Why do we spend so much time on this website? What are we doing during this time? Is this time valuable? Is important news recieved on Facebook made less important because it was shared on Facebook? I do not have the answers to these questions, but I'd like to spend a little time talking about the place where we seem to do the majority of our talking today.
Previews for the movie "The Social Network" portrayed Facebook as a place worthy of nostolgic feelings. This makes sense. Think about the news and information you recieve on Facebook and how they make you feel. Relationship updates, emotional blurbs, and pictures of friends and family are frequently exchanged. You can organize or be invited to a friend's party, a school sponsored function, or a community event with a minor celebrity. Think about how you feel when you are looking at the profile of your new crush or that person to whom you are "talking." These can all be very emotional experiences. As you look at these posts and recieve these updates you go through feelings the same way as when you are talking face to face. Emotional people feel nostolgia as they look through old facebook information, just as they do when they revisit a place where they were happy or meet up woth old friends. The only real difference is that it happens at the computer and you do not have to be anywhere or with any one specific to feel the nostalgia.
Important interactions happen over facebook. Some people recognize that it is better to have some exchanges face to face, but in a pinch, Facebook serves nicely. For example, it would be better for me to meet new cousins in person, but since they live far away and my family is not close enough to meet up more than a few times a year, pictures on facebook do nicely to put new faces with new names, and I do not have to miss the first few days after the new cousin is born. Those first days are meticulously recorded and shared on Facebook. Another example is keeping in touch with college friends over breaks. For long breaks, it is common for me to write a few sentences on close friends' walls. I'd prefer to be hanging out in the dorm with them playing games or gossiping, but a short note to tell them I am thinking of them connects us nicely until the time we are reunited.
Curiously, I do not feel the need to do this with high school friends. Those people who I have known for six to fourteen years are a different story. These people I talk to via Facebook to make plans and to comment on statuses and that is all. When we meet up, as we invariably do over long breaks, I find that we pick up right where we left off even after spending many months apart, exchanging only a few words over that time. These friendships are not better for being weened from Facebook, but they are just more comfortable. We do not need to remind each other of our existance. We know that we are all there for each other when the time comes, and when that time doesn't come, but a chance to hang out does come, we are ready to have fun and enjoy each other's company.
The reason I am thinking about this today, is because a friend of mine who falls into the last category of friendship (those I knew in highschool and many years even before that) had to tell me something crucial via Facebook. This would have been a hard conversation face to face, but it was slightly more difficult on facebook. This friend came out and told me that they were gay. My friend did not know how I would take the news, so they were nervous about telling me. They felt that it needed to be done and that there was never going to be a right time to say it, so they just told me kind of while we were having a different and much more trivial/abstract conversation via chat.
While I was in high school I avoided forming an opinion on gay anything. I felt that my church told me one thing while my life was telling me something different, so I was opinionless so as not to offend either aspect of myself. In my first year in college, I was given the ability to see that life is about loving all people and that it is not my place to judge anyone for anything, especially not a characteristic that they cannot control and that only defines one part of who they are. I do not know if it is right or wrong, as I am not given the understanding of the mind of God, but I know that it is right to keep being a friend to my friend regardless of the rest. That is what Jesus would do, and I am so thankful that I figured this out before my friend came out to me.
As for the actual conversation, it was difficult because my friend knew about my religion and they did not know my stance on this one issue. My friend thought it was important that I know now, so the conversation happened. I felt the need to communicate my acceptance repeatedly because my face and voice were not able to stress my sincerity, but then I felt like I had said it too many times and it might sound as if I was convincing myself along with my friend. In the end, I think I got it right by showing my interest in my friend's experience in coming out. It will be my task for the rest of the summer to confirm my words I typed tonight with my actions. This will certainly put my new opinions to the test, but I care about my friend, so I do not forsee a problem.
This might be the most important thing that has happened to me on Facebook. It was something of a revelation that something this important could happen on Facebook. This exchange has caused me to re-evaluate the connections formed and information exchanged on Facebook, and I have found that it is more useful and emoional than I ever imagined. This must be why we spend so much time on The Social Network.
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