Technology and Me: Facebook through the Years

Middle School

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When I was a child I was quite shy and quiet. As an adult this is not something that hinders my life, I have found my community of people who accept me for who I am. However, as a kid, this has a greatly negative impact on my social life. I was too nervous to speak to new people and always found doubt in the few school friendships I had, afraid they would get bored of me. I knew that I had so much to say, but I just did not know how actually to give volume to my voice. That all changed when Facebook made its introduction to my 6th-grade class. Every student who had a computer at home made a Facebook, though we were not the minimum age of 13. Not wanting to fall behind I made one too. I put in my fake birthday and took a very grainy photo of myself using my family's computer webcam. Thus the Facebook page of "Syen P." with a dark, grainy profile picture was born. I "friended" every classmate I could, finding it was easier to do that on a website than in real life. My closest school friend and I would message back, sometimes when we were in the same room. I felt that online I could post and say things I never felt the courage to speak in "real" life. I felt invincible, untouchable, and dare I say a little mad with this unsupervised power. As with many with unchecked power, it would all come crashing down around me all too soon.

After about a year of using Facebook, I was an active member of the Facebook community. I would post every day, writing about what I was thinking, inspirational quotes, artsy photos I took of rocks, and whatever grievances I had been feeling that day. While self-expression is a wonderful thing, especially for a kid who tended to keep thoughts bottled up, it can come with some dire consequences. While I do not remember how it started, my closest school friend and I had gotten into an argument. We had been fighting all day at school, going so far as to purposely sit away from each other at lunchtime and exchange mean faces at each other. I concluded that day how I always did, saying good night to my friends on Facebook. However, on that particular night, I decided to air out my friend and I's spat with a particularly mean-spirited post. At the time it had felt incredibly justified and satisfactory, as I was coming from a place of anger and hurt. However, I would soon learn that just because I am upset does not give me the right to say whatever I wish. The next day of school was filled with many tears and accusations. I had unrightfully revealed sacred friendship secrets in my angry post. Said things online that I would never have said to a friend's face. It did not matter that the day before we exchanged some angry words in person because all anyone had seen was the terrible post I had made. I quickly learned that the power I had felt publishing that post was immediately extinguished when I was met with their very real tears. I knew then that I could never do that again, I immediately apologized and after a very tear-filled exchange, we patched up our friendship. That evening when I got home I deleted my Facebook account, never wanting to go through that again. 

High School

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While I know that it was not Facebook's fault I had made that mean post I had felt that it was too much of a risk to allow myself that kind of unsupervised screentime. I was a quiet kid who felt more comfortable expressing myself online, both the good and ugly parts of myself. It would be many years before I would allow myself to create a new account. It was not until my junior year of high school that I dived back into the Facebook community. By then there were many new additions such as dedicated groups and pages that you could like to show your interests. I had decided that go around that I would only be more careful about the words I posted on there and that if I had any problems with friends we would solve it in person, not behind a computer screen. This time around, I was no longer using my family's home computer but a smartphone that I could make posts from. I was a lot more sparing about the posts I made and was much more involved in Facebook groups about TV shows I liked and book discussion groups. It was through an aimless scroll that I stumbled across a public group that seemed to be about my school. It was made by current students at my school who would post daily gossip and funny things that had happened that day. I found great enjoyment in that page, it talked about things like which teachers we thought were secretly dating, which doors the security guards did not patrol that were easiest to sneak out of, and what was a "flop" of the day. Out of everything posted, the "flop" of the day was the most mean-spirited. It was usually a person, student, or teacher, and was of them having either what has been deemed an "ugly" outfit or doing something funny, usually them falling or making a "weird" face. This daily "flop" definitely fell under the category of mean-spirited/bullying. The only caveat was that a new picture was posted each school day so the people would often move on fast.

While I did not participate in this group, I was guilty of scrolling through it every other day. Most of the posts made me laugh, and the "flop" posts had not been too bad for me to see an issue with it. That is until one day when scrolling through, I stumbled upon a familiar sight. That day's flop was focused on an ugly outfit, however, it was not bad because of the style but because of the very obvious bright red stain on light blue paisley pants. A pair of light blue paisley pants that happened to belong to me. I was both horrified and humiliated to see my classmates poking fun at a very bad day I had had. While a photo was taken of my back, obscuring my face, any friend who looked close could figure out that that body belonged to me. It unfortunately took me being the "flop" of the day to realize that this was not a nice page. It did not matter that the next day some new flop-worthy picture would be posted because in that present I had felt such embarrassment and shame that I could not see beyond it. Once I worked through my humiliation, I decided to work through why I had been okay with laughing at posts and poking fun at classmates and teachers. I realized that I did not like that version of myself. I decided to report the page and once again delete my Facebook page. I did not check back to see if it got taken down, not want to fall back into old habits. However, I did learn the next year a teacher stumbled across it and our school decided to give an assembly on online bullying and showed us the movie Cyberbully.

College

I am now in college, experiencing new classes, interests, and bills. I quickly learned just how expensive it is to be an adult, which means I am counting every penny and relying on campus free Wi-Fi for communication on the phone. With limited text and data, I rely on school Wi-Fie and what would be round 3 of Facebook and Facebook Messenger for communication. I have worked a lot on myself since middle school and high school. While I am still a quiet person, I find that my social life has taken off in undergraduate college. I get involved in a lot of campus clubs and events. Become friends with people who accept the quiet parts of me and get me to come out of my shell more. I even became vice president of a couple of clubs I joined and ended up running their Facebook pages. I learned that while I still do not like to post a lot, I can connect with friends and family members who live far away from me now. I feel more confident in myself and my online Facebook presence. Leaving this to be my final Facebook profile created, with no deletion set in sight.

Technology and Me

It is quite evident that Facebook and I have had a tumultuous relationship. From posting mean posts to being on the receiving end of a mean post, it would surprise people more that I still have a profile given the amount time of time I gripe about Facebook. Even though I still have my reservations about this website and app, I have found that the good outweighs it. With time and maturing, I found a good balance between me and the app that allows people to go wildly unchecked. Seeing my uncle post a picture of his newly whittled duck brings me joy over every upsetting comment I read about something I am passionate about. I found that I needed to find the right balance of what I contribute to this app versus what others do. For me the right balance is a blank profile with a history of me "liking" images of my loved ones, saving posts of how to make your jack-o-lantern last longer, (I tried the upside-down trick and all I got was a jack-o-lantern that comically caved in on itself) and so on. I knew that if I wanted to end the cycle of deletion, I had to focus on positivity and only allow myself access to things that brought me joy. The world is full of so much strife and pain, that I decided that I needed a place where I could take a break from that. That break looks like me opening my Facebook app after a long day and watching a video of my baby cousin taking her first steps. While my profile may look bare and my friend list only in the double digits, I know that when I enter that space I will leave with a smile on my face. Which is something that took me years to figure out. 

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