In Defense of Facebook

A version of this month’s blog was published in July’s edition of The Jacksonville Review, as a rebuttal to the publisher’s note that appeared in May’s issue of The Review.



Although a busy workload—followed by a vacation—forced me to skip last month’s column, I still had time to stew about the publisher’s note, “Forget Facebook—Meet Me at Pony,” in May’s issue of The Jacksonville Review. It’s been stuck in my craw for the past two months.

You see … well … I have a confession to make: I use Facebook … that’s right. And I’m getting tired of Facebook-cynics’ knee jerk reactions to the mere mention of FACEBOOK (let alone invitations to join!). They provide a litany of reasons why they’ll never be caught lurking in the denizens of Facebook.

As publisher Whitman Parker said in May’s issue, “I fear too many Facebook folks are building their sense of community and self-esteem based on the number of hits they receive and the number of online friends they ‘collect’.”

But he didn’t stop there. “Here in Jacksonville,” he conjectured, “I bet the majority of citizens would prefer to have a live [rather than online] discussion at Pony Espresso, The Good Bean, the Bella Union, or many of the other places fostering healthier, human-focused interaction.”

“Unfortunately,” he went on to say, “I suspect many are using Facebook as a digital meeting place to substitute stepping-out into the real world.”

Hold the phone! I use Facebook and I step-out into the real world every day. I see, I touch and I hug someone—every day. For me, and most of my “friends,” Facebook is not a “substitute” for personal interaction. Emphatically. My sense of community is derived from face-to-face contact with real live people in real time.

But I also use Facebook.

I check out photos, videos, comments, links, musings and lame jokes from friends and family who live both nearby and far away. It’s the best way to swap photos with my kids, who live in Eugene and Portland, and keep up with my nephew in Texas. One of my “friends” is a former exchange student from Alba, Italy who stayed with us—and whom we visited in Italy. And the best treat of all has been reconnecting with old friends from high school and college, as well as former students. None of it would be possible without Facebook.

I’m also networked with people I see regularly: friends, neighbors, colleagues, clients. And ironically, Facebook has brought us closer. When we see each other—face-to-face—the time together is richer because we’ve shared bits of our lives with each other on Facebook. All it takes is a half-hour or so, three or four times a week. (Sure, some people—especially teenagers—are obsessive about social networking, but my experience tells me they’re the exception, not the rule.)

And another thing: I haven’t sacrificed my privacy. I haven’t splashed the gory details of my life for the entire online world to see. (And thanks to Facebook settings, users control who can and cannot see their pages.) I’ve developed a profile and a “voice” that honestly represent who I am without revealing information best reserved for intimate conversation. Unremarkably, I am a friend, a colleague, a professional and a social networker at the same time. I run a business and a household, parent my kids (albeit from afar), work in the garden, walk my dog, clean the garage, read, write, exercise—and use Facebook.

But the best part of each day is spending face-to-face time with loved ones, friends, neighbors and my dog Walter. Facebook could never replace or replicate that.

There’s no disputing that technology has revolutionized both the workplace and our personal lives. E-mail remains a constant, but the evolving world of online communication—social networking, blogging, podcasting, photo sharing, texting—is radically changing the way we think, communicate and interact. Facebook (and all its variants) reflects the world we live in today. We can choose to join that world or resist it, but if we “ignore” its inevitable advance, we risk obsolescence.

If it’s true that a newspaper is history’s first draft, then Facebook just eclipsed it. For a literate society, it’s become a way to document life as we live it.