Thoughts on Facebook…

I took a break from FB, and the forums, for most of January. It was good in a lot of ways, but I knew it was a temporary break so it didn’t result in calling people more often or anything like that.

I have a friend who dropped FB permanently and it’s actually improved our relationship, even though she is long distance, because we email much more often, she writes more indepth stuff on her blog or on Google+ than she did on FB, and when we do talk it seems, well, less shallow, in a way.

It’s got me thinking about how FB has changed the way I use the internet and connect with other people. I have a much larger group of people I keep in contact with and it is a lot easier to keep track of what people are doing, babies born, life events, etc….but I feel like I say less that is worth listening to, and so does everyone else. I used to be in the middle of the Catholic blog scene, and those connections I made with other bloggers seemed more substantial…but now even those internet friends seem to primarily use FB or Twitter and there are fewer long thoughtful posts.

On the other hand, maybe what I really need is the discipline to limit my use of FB so that I do more of the actual reaching out. It’s just so much easier (in a number of ways, since I’m somewhat prone to social anxiety) to log in to FB and create an artificial feeling of connection by ‘liking’ a dozen updates and links than it is to maintain an email correspondance or find time to pick up a phone and call someone.

Thoughts?