shinier social media like Instagram, Tinder, and Snapchat. One day, those will be rendered obsolete as well when we find something else we love more tomorrow, chasing it down onto the subway tracks.
3
Facebook Is Ruining My Life
A s I was reading Walden and reacquainting myself with Henry David Thoreau’s thoughts on the joys of solitude, I tried to remember the last time I’d spent any time by myself—truly by myself, with only my thoughts to occupy my mind, no iPhone or iPad or computer to distract me.
I thought about the time right after Samantha, my long-term girlfriend, broke up with me, and how I had done everything possible to avoid confronting my feelings. The healthy reaction would have been to sit by myself and reflect, as I had in high school or the beginning of college when going through other difficult times. But instead of dealing with how I felt, I self-medicated by staying constantly connected: over the course of ten days I e-mailed all of my friends, signed on to Gchat, texted, tweeted, FaceTimed, and checked Facebook hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.
What had seemed like a blessing of distraction was a curse in disguise. I realized that I had not experienced anything like Thoreau’s idea of solitude in six years—since I first got a smartphone.
Alone time is a chance to contemplate what’s going on in my life or where I am mentally or emotionally. It’s a time to figure things out, when no third parties are interrupting or hijacking my thoughts. I think I used to be more secure when there was more bandwidth for alone time. Spending time with just me made me like me more. I got to know myself better, and so I would know how best to handle challenges, disagreements, and times of strife. The more time I spent anxiously typing away on my smartphone and being my virtual self on social media, the less close I felt to my core, the part of me that made the best decisions, the part of me that was truly the best I could be. I always loved Thoreau’s words “I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning when nobody calls.” Thoreau was not a hermit, he just understood the importance of a divide between oneself and the world at large. “Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries,” he wrote. He complained once about a friendship, saying, “We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.” Sounds familiar. Everyone we’ve ever met in our lives is just a click away, and if we don’t want to think about something difficult, we can text; write an e-mail; check Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram; scour YouTube; play a video game; make plans—wedon’t have to be alone if we don’t want to be. True solitude has become uncomfortable for us.
It’s been said that Thoreau was the most content man alive because he had found the balance and stability in total solitude. The ultimate transcendentalist—he believed in the goodness of man and nature—Thoreau lived a life without distraction (granted, this was 1845, long before the phonograph or the telephone) in natural surroundings next to Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Before Thoreau, many famous theorists and great religious figures sat in seclusion in order to connect with and speak to their spirit guides; the prophets, sadhus, and yogis conducted their visionary experiences and trances in the desert, a cave, or some other place that allowed for absolute solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, another transcendentalist, described how being alone could bring you a deeper appreciation of friends and society: “The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.” Emerson believed in friendship, but he also valued solitude. We need our alone time in order to be functional and emotionally aware in our relationships, at work, and in
3
Facebook Is Ruining My Life
A s I was reading Walden and reacquainting myself with Henry David Thoreau’s thoughts on the joys of solitude, I tried to remember the last time I’d spent any time by myself—truly by myself, with only my thoughts to occupy my mind, no iPhone or iPad or computer to distract me.
I thought about the time right after Samantha, my long-term girlfriend, broke up with me, and how I had done everything possible to avoid confronting my feelings. The healthy reaction would have been to sit by myself and reflect, as I had in high school or the beginning of college when going through other difficult times. But instead of dealing with how I felt, I self-medicated by staying constantly connected: over the course of ten days I e-mailed all of my friends, signed on to Gchat, texted, tweeted, FaceTimed, and checked Facebook hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.
What had seemed like a blessing of distraction was a curse in disguise. I realized that I had not experienced anything like Thoreau’s idea of solitude in six years—since I first got a smartphone.
Alone time is a chance to contemplate what’s going on in my life or where I am mentally or emotionally. It’s a time to figure things out, when no third parties are interrupting or hijacking my thoughts. I think I used to be more secure when there was more bandwidth for alone time. Spending time with just me made me like me more. I got to know myself better, and so I would know how best to handle challenges, disagreements, and times of strife. The more time I spent anxiously typing away on my smartphone and being my virtual self on social media, the less close I felt to my core, the part of me that made the best decisions, the part of me that was truly the best I could be. I always loved Thoreau’s words “I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning when nobody calls.” Thoreau was not a hermit, he just understood the importance of a divide between oneself and the world at large. “Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries,” he wrote. He complained once about a friendship, saying, “We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.” Sounds familiar. Everyone we’ve ever met in our lives is just a click away, and if we don’t want to think about something difficult, we can text; write an e-mail; check Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram; scour YouTube; play a video game; make plans—wedon’t have to be alone if we don’t want to be. True solitude has become uncomfortable for us.
It’s been said that Thoreau was the most content man alive because he had found the balance and stability in total solitude. The ultimate transcendentalist—he believed in the goodness of man and nature—Thoreau lived a life without distraction (granted, this was 1845, long before the phonograph or the telephone) in natural surroundings next to Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Before Thoreau, many famous theorists and great religious figures sat in seclusion in order to connect with and speak to their spirit guides; the prophets, sadhus, and yogis conducted their visionary experiences and trances in the desert, a cave, or some other place that allowed for absolute solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, another transcendentalist, described how being alone could bring you a deeper appreciation of friends and society: “The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone, for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.” Emerson believed in friendship, but he also valued solitude. We need our alone time in order to be functional and emotionally aware in our relationships, at work, and in
Similar Books
