Facebook Saves Lives: In Defense of A Social Media Habit

I have this dear friend.  I was her bridesmaid and she was mine.  Back at school she was an 'influencer'.  She was intelligent, worldly wise and clued-up about music and pop culture.  She introduced me to Paul Simon (see how cool?) and together we laid eyes on a CD player for the first time.  At eleven she stated she would be a lawyer, and sure enough she became a total hot shot.  Then she added being a super-mum of three under-threes to her CV.  With all her achieving and reproducing, she let being plugged-in slide down her list of priorities.  She simply didn't 'Facebook'.

I almost choked on my chocolate egg (is there no end to the Easter chocolate?) a few days ago when I saw her name pop up as a recommended Facebook friend.  I quickly fired off an invite and rejoiced that I'd finally be able to keep in touch with her better.  I got her (email) response today:

"I do NOT understand why people like Facebook. I just hooked up again to see someone’s photos and I just cannot believe the information people put on it.  It is the end of privacy as we know it. AND surely no-one with a job has time for it.  If you didn’t have full-time help, I’m sure you wouldn’t bother!!"

OUCH! I felt like I'd been punched by the angry, chocolate-egg-laying Easter hen looking for its stolen babies.  Sad and Hurt.  It wasn't the insinuation that Facebook was my distraction from filing my nails while a maid took care of my children and a husband polished his nose on the corporate grindstone that got me.  I take her opinion personally because it is a total dismissal of one of the things I prize most.  Being an expat mother raising young children in a country where I have no family members, in a city where I haven't known anyone longer than 18 months can be a lonely undertaking.  It is difficult to keep friendships alive when you have been away for many years, but impossible to operate in life without them.  I need my old friends so I need Facebook, and I need her to be one of my Facebook friends.

Of course I am making wonderful new friends, but I crave being with people who really know me and care about me, opportunities for which are few and far between.  Every year more people have babies and fewer people visit. (The same friend only half jokingly promised she would come to visit when her children were at boarding school, in about 12 years time!) I hate that I don't know my friends' husbands better, that I have to think twice to remember their kids names, that I don't know what they thought of that TV program last night, what music they are listening to or what they are cooking for dinner.  Facebook helps fill in these spaces, with an insight into the trivial day-to-day treasures of life that get overlooked when you meet friends or cousins for one afternoon a year, and the events of the past 12 months are reduced to significant events like job changes, new houses, new children.

To set the record straight I do work.  Maybe not as much as I could, but I'm not totally idle.  I also know plenty of successfully employed people that are very active on Facebook.   As for the full-time help thing, I'll just say that time is like money - you use every penny that you have.  If I have paid 'help', it is so I can get more done, and do it better, not to free up time for Facebook.  Anyway, I think that Facebook saves me time in the long run.  It allows me to know what's going on with the people I love all over the world, quickly and easily.  All the hassle of attaching image files to cookie-cutter family emails is removed.  I also belong to an amazing Facebook group of about 100 expat women who live in Rio.  I can post anything related to living Brazil, especially concerning raising children, and get an answer within seconds from a handful of women that have gone through the same experience.  In the absence of family and old friends, that type of virtual support network is precious indeed. 

And just because Facebook friendships are so easy and convenient doesn't make them any less meaningful.  Of course it's not as great as actally seeing people, but surely it's better than nothing.  If anything I think Facebook has extended the love....renewing old friendships, nurturing new ones.  But maybe for this friendship I might just have to go old school and pick up the telephone.  Thank God for Skype...that's a whole other addiction.