A number of people who have either emailed me or stopped to talk to me after reading Why I am Shutting Down Facebook for a While. Some have told me how they had anxious moments as they did a Facebook fast. One man shared how he thought he might be missing out on a conversation or an event his “friends” were having. He stated, “I literally felt like he was withdrawing from a drug. I thought I would be an outcast.” Another person told me how much more organic her life felt when she ditched the digital connection to her friends and launched into a face-to-face intensive time of friendship. She intentionally hugged and connected through physical touch with her friends. We can become a slave to technology and the digital realm like the Borg, who only lived only for the consumption of technology. Paul Schneider, our communications pastor, told me a story about a Wednesday night in which he and two are three other staff members were standing the lobby and the famous you’ve got text ping on the iphone went off. All three plus others around them started scrambling for phones.
All in all, I am sensing many people are having “Facebook-fatigue,” which isn’t simply because of Facebook. Rather, this tiredness occurs from a never ending connection to the Borg in which we never feel fully released to engage in our true, incarnate stream of our life. If you don’t believe me, watch next time you have two teens in your backseat on a trip. They’ll text to others for hours on end but never engage in conversation with each other. I say we should all try unplugging or at least diminish the way the Borg-effect causes us to miss real tangible life all around us for a while and see what happens.
