A Farewell to "Friends"

The other day at work, I was surprised to get an actual Facebook friend request and not just another of their friend suggestions. This one came from an ex who I haven't seen or heard from in at least 10 years. We broke up almost 20 years ago after I moved back home, states away. They'd reached out not long after our break up but they were going through AA and in the apology part of their therapy. Then another time years later after they'd gone through a divorce. We'd talk for awhile and they'd vanish again into whatever they were doing wherever they were. So when I got this friend request, my immediate thought was "what now?" I told my mom about it and she was very much "oh how are they? what are they up to?" and all those southern endearments. So she was surprised when I told her I didn't know because I didn't know if I wanted to accept this friend request. My mom accepts any friend request she gets, including her own exes, so it hadn't seem to occur to her that a person could always say "deny." That just like in real life, we can always say no to someone and not have to share our reasons.

For this blog post, I'm focusing on the topic of boundaries and saying "no" to what we have at our disposal and doing so through a collection of articles.

Do Not Disturb

Perhaps it's my age or just who I am, but I don't enjoy a life filled with screens. I work with my hands a lot and my process is heavily influenced by my intuition so I find distractions very difficult to work around. If I'm doing something repetitive like needlework then I'll listen to an audiobook or music. So it's always wild when I come out of my studio and often find my husband at ease with up to three screens in front of him: the TV as he plays on the Switch, his laptop in his lap with a show or Youtube video playing, and his phone in his hands playing another game. 

So when I read Kevin Roose's article "Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain" I immediately thought of my husband needing to go through a similar detox. In this article Roose talks about enlisting the help of a phone coach who helped him with a 30-day phone intervention. One of the tools that he adopted was to ask himself three questions when he'd go to pick up his phone: "What for? Why now? What else?" Phone usage can be such a mindless thing we do so I think taking the time to really address the whats and whys is a great way to break that cycle of movement. 

The end of his article had a great little statement about people using their phones "to cope with boredom and anxiety." I love yoga, especially Yin yoga (a restorative type where you hold poses longer) and the Shavasana part (the end where you lay on the floor and relax). My husband was having back problems so I convinced him to come to class with me and he hated it. He said gets bored but he understands that he's bored because he has a hard time quieting his mind and just relaxing in stillness. 

Teenagers Without Cell Phones

Ron Srigley wrote an article for MIT Technology Review on an extra credit challenge he posed to his students after most of his class did poorly on their midterm: can you live without your cell phone for nine days? Twelve of his students agreed and their responses were all pretty similar. For many of them, face-to-face interactions with people were anxiety-inducing and they struggled with a sense of awkwardness about it all. Similar to Roose from above, they also began to notice just how many people were also in their phones all the time and how those interactions come across as rude or codependent. 

I did find it interesting how many of the students relied on their cellphones as a source of safety awareness. The last time I was in college I had a landline in my apartment and no cell phone. Our campus was giant and, at the time, there was serial killer kidnapping and murdering women just off campus while another person was breaking into women's apartments to sleep in their beds. I also drove a very old car that was prone to breakdowns on the side of the road. For these instances, I always kept change on me in case I needed to use a pay phone - a quarter was my safety device. Recently, I had to get a new cell phone because mine gave up the ghost. For the day I didn't have it I kept thinking that my car was going to breakdown or I was going to get into a wreck and I was panicking! 

Facebook Friends and "Friends"

The last article I read about letting go is by Dan Price and it is a list of why you should delete your Facebook friends. The five reasons his list are:

1. It's bad for your brain
2. You're sacrificing your best relationships
3. It helps maintain your privacy
4. It will help clean up your newsfeed
5. People are just annoying

As the other articles stated, too much time on your phone is bad for your brain and it doesn't seem to surprise anyone once they pick up their heads. The article includes Robin Dunbar's TED talk about how you can only really maintain a group of 150 friends. So regardless of the number of friends social media says you have, only 150 of them are actually viable. If you try to maintain more than that then you're unable to have any deep connections with people. 

Sort of similar to my ex reaching out to me, my husband had a friend request the other day from someone he was in elementary school with. He was like, "I don't even remember this person..." and I reminded him that he doesn't need to be friends with someone he doesn't even remember from some 25 years ago. My husband and I then talked about people who do that and what is their reasoning because what are you going to talk about?

via GIPHY

Adding another random person is just adding to the noise of your newsfeed (reason #4). The Facebook algorithms are already mysterious enough in not showing you who you actually want to hear from so why add someone else into the mix? 

I used to have some 700 Facebook friends when I was playing a lot of roller derby and doing theatre work. Most people were moving from MySpace to Facebook and everyone was trying to friend everyone so my feed was extremely random. One day I decided I needed to cut back and I established and unfriending rule for myself: I would unfriend anyone I didn't know or I didn't feel like saying happy birthday to. Price's reason #5 comes into play here because my friend group definitely had it's annoying people and I have a short level of tolerance for that. 

My Use Today

Now that I'm older, I'm more particular about social media and find myself using it less and less. My Facebook usage has become more about focused groups such as the Librarian Support Group or Teen Underground (both for work) and other interests I have in the arts. I would love for the librarian support groups to move to a different platform so I can stop using Facebook for that. One of the best parts of those groups is that people can post anonymously because we deal with a lot of burnout situations or ones that involve difficult coworkers, managers, and/or patrons as well as book banning groups that harass us. Teen Underground is also a part of a blog that shares resources for teen programming - what has gotten teens in the door and what hasn't. Using the Facebook group is just the go-to for sharing ideas, links, and files with each other. 

Personally, I've cut back my friends to those who I actually do know and have great memories with. Right now, my Facebook is very festive because LSU is one game away from winning the Men's College World Series and it's been a battle to get here to today's game. When I decide to stop looking at Facebook is when I begin to notice all of the ads or suggestions for things I might like/think are funny/courses I might be interested in. I've very aware of when Facebook reminds me that it is a business and their success comes from keeping you on their site as long as possible. Then I know to turn it off and pick up something in my to-be-read stack. 

Image source: Bizarro Comics