Facebook now provides self-esteem.

About a month ago I deactivated my Facebook account. I needed a break from the 'OMG please like and share!!' posts, the blatantly self-promotional posts, the Foursquare check-ins that just tell me you're not home in case I want to burglarize the place, and the passive-aggressive posts that provide no context yet scream out for a response. You know the ones - they say something along the lines of 'well this sucks' and nothing else, begging you to pry in a false display of concern.

I even saw conversations happen on Facebook among people who lived in the same house!

So I needed a hiatus. Facebook was just causing me too much stress, with the ratio of inane, nonsense posts to valuable, informative posts being very high. It appears, however, that in doing so I am in the vast minority. According to this article on Cnet, immediate feedback on Facebook posts is required for many people to feel a sense of belonging, to feel involved, loved, and worthy. In other words, without immediate feedback to posts people suffer measurable drops in self-esteem and self-value, they feel ostracized and no longer part of a social circle or group of friends. Even depression can result. The Atlantic has a brutally in-depth article about technology, Facebook included, actually making us lonelier as our social interaction moves all on-line to the increasing exclusion of actual human contact.

Answer: Yes. Also, don't think what this image depicts doesn't happen.

This is troublesome, a continuing example of the move to virtual interaction over actual interaction. I was astounded, and more than a little distressed, when a couple of friends (not many, mind you, I vanished from Facebook almost unnoticed, apparently) informed me, one via email and one via text, that they didn't know how to get in touch with me any other way than Facebook. Apparently they didn't realize they had just contacted me in a way other than Facebook.

I don't have anything inherently against Facebook, I used it to keep in touch with people all over the world, it was good for sharing photos and interesting tidbits and even for group meetings for projects on which I was involved, and it does provide a valuable source of social interaction. It's good for those things and I don't think people should abandon it. But when it starts to become the barometer of your self-worth and your value as a person, something is very, very wrong. Personal interaction is monumentally important, but actual personal interaction, not just virtual.

Let's get outside, people! Call someone on the phone!

(In the interests of full disclosure, my understanding is if I log back on to Facebook it will all come back, so perhaps in the future I will do that; never say never!)