Halfway off the Grid- Confessions of a Non-Facebook User

Facebook, the social networking giant that began with only college students but now includes employers and grandparents, is both convenient and popular. Everyone around me uses Facebook, including my mother ("If you were on facebook, you could tend my [Farmville] crops for me") and my grandmother ("I like to see the pictures of the family"). There are pets with facebook pages. Even some fictional characters can be found and will "friend" their fans. I don't have a facebook page. I never have, and I never will- but maybe not for the reasons you might think.

When asked about my abstinence from one of the Internet's most popular services, I usually like to joke that my goal is to be the last living creature without a Facebook page (this contest will end in 2019. The last two years will be a holdout between me and a starfish, and then the starfish will decide that it wants to be tagged in photos and play Mafia Wars).

If pressed, I will go on to explain that the drama that goes on between Facebook users is simply not my scene; such drama tends to be emotional taxing and ultimately a complete waste of my time. This, while not untrue, is not the whole story.

I don't use Facebook because I don't want my personality, thoughts, and ideas at the turbulent age of 20 to be recorded for posterity. I want the right to change my mind. Let me explain:

Facebook doesn't delete user pages. When you create a Facebook account, you agree to give ownership of any information, photos, and comments you share to Facebook. It's very hard to defend yourself legally against an employer who won't hire you because he saw pictures of you drinking beer on your Facebook page (and yet your profile says you're only 17. Hmm...). It is normal for humans to act differently in different social situations (animals do it, too). You might not express the same love for "getting completely wasted" at a job interview as you would at a frat party. Facebook, somewhat problematically, is a record of your interactions with people in different areas of your life; this explains why many Facebook users decline friend requests from their parents or other authority figures (and parents are wising up- a friend of minerecieved several angry phone calls from his stepmother when he did not immediately except her request). I certainly don't act the same way around my roommate as I do around my grandfather. So why should I use a service that forces me to condense the facets of my personality into one, acceptable-to-all user?

I probably sound like an old-aged technophobe writing this post, so I should clarify: I love my computer. I love webcomics, stupid pictures of cats, video games, and all the other great and awful things about living in the age of the Internet as much as anyone else.

That said, Facebook scares me. I'm not ready to make my personality accessible by Internet, no matter how many times I might get to "poke" someone.

Kitty