What I've Learned From Facebook

Before I get into what I’ve learned from this website I should probably explain what it is to those of you who may not be familiar with it.

Facebook.com is a free-access social networking website that is privately operated and owned. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks containing photos and very brief biographies of the members of a campus community that some U.S. colleges and prep schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates while he was a student at Harvard University. The website currently has more than 200 million active users worldwide making it now the largest social networking site, overtaking MySpace.

Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria and Iran although Iran unblocked it this past  February. Businesses ban it at the workplace to discourage employees from wasting time using the service. Privacy continues to be an issue and the site has been compromised by viruses and hackers several times.

I found Facebook in October 2007 when I was trying to share my photos in London, Warwick and Bilboa with my family back home and the internet connection took an instant dislike to my PhotoBucket account. I did not start using it regularly until perhaps a year ago. Even now I am on their sporadically, usually when I am trying to avoid something I should be doing. Like preparing a sermon.

As I have poked around on this site and seen it grow and change, I found myself returning to a burning question. What need has this site recognized and satisfied to make it so wildly successful despite it’s shortcomings? Nothing becomes this popular if it doesn’t fill a need, and a widely shared one at that. To answer that question, let me share with you some things I have learned on Facebook.

1. I have learned that some people I barely know, can answer questions about me more accurately than most members of my own family. I created a 10 question quiz, “How Well Do You Know Ann Fuller?” Only one person scored higher than a 60% and my husband only got half right. Though to give him credit, if he’d slowed down when he took it, he’d have figured out two more and scored a 70%. I learned that most people consider me an extravert and have no idea I am off the Myers-Briggs chart as an introvert. Pretty much everyone guessed that I would grab my photo albums if my house was on fire and only one person said that it would be my computer. That would be the person who scored a 90%, my sister. Must be the twin thing. She only flubbed my favorite colors, but she can be forgiven for that because I tossed in the colors of my favorite football club as a red herring. 

2. I took a boat load of odd quizzes and learned that my Euro-Personality is British. 

You are sophisticated, well-mannered, polite and proper. You prefer negotiation over violence. You have a witty, sometimes wacky, sense of humor. As you resemble the people of Britain, you just might enjoy an evening of Monty python movies and fish and chips.. 

My NPR Personality is a senior European correspondent for NPR's foreign desk, my purpose in life is to be a Visionary. 

“You have the ability to see things in a way that others cannot and your perception is second to none however you do not always follow the logical path even though you can almost always predict how things will turn out. You are gifted in business and your insight into the future makes you an excellent person to give good advice to those around you.” 

I am some Jimmy Buffet song whose title I did not recognize but, according to the quiz, there is a place in your heart you want to return to. In fact, what you would really like to do is quit your stressful job and be a filthy, stinking beach bum. Maybe without the filthy, stinking part. 

I learned that the celebrity who would play me in a movie of my life is Jennifer Anniston, proving to me these quizzes are fun, but ultimately annoying. I was shooting for Susan Sarandon or Julie Walters with an American accent.  

I took the quiz, How Annoying Are You? Answer: Incredibly! Wow, you've got a lot to say and you're going to be heard whether people like it or not. You probably also make people cringe internally, but who cares! It's ok that you're incredibly annoying, many people are. Can you change? Sure, but what's the fun in that? 

I am 100% North Jersey and rated as a Yankee on the How Southern Are You Quiz. My ancestors are spinning in the red clay of Georgia. I am St. Uhura on Star Trek, a Caramel Macciato for a Starbucks Drink and the ancient goddess Ishtar. 

3. I have learned that people I never said two syllables to in high school want to be my friend now. That my husband’s fraternity brothers are even more fun in their 40s than they were in their 20s. That women I met online ten years ago are sharing the same joys and concerns they were a decade ago. That I am not the oldest or youngest parent, poorest, richest, least successful or most successful of my college peers. I have learned that people are really really funny and can help you put things in perspective. Mostly I have learned that it really is a shame that the easiest way to stay in touch with people you care about is in sound bites on a public website. 

I do believe that through all of this I have figured out what the needs are that Facebook is meeting, at least in its own way. In point of fact, it is three interrelated needs. 

• Identity
• Community
• Intimacy

Anne Klaeysen, leader of the Ethical Society of New York, made the point about identity when we were talking about the site as she had noticed the preponderance of “which XYZ are you?” quizzes as well. I have addressed the issue of identity from the pulpit before, but much of who we are is based upon a relational context. Our identity is not that of an isolated individual in a sea of six billion individuals, but derives from the groups with which we affiliate. Some are thrust upon us, like our families of origin or the nation of our birth. Others we choose, like our academic institutions, religious organizations and careers. 

What does Facebook’s resounding success with their oodles upon oodles of quizzes indicate to us about a profound need with respect to identity? I think it is telling us that too much of who we are is felt as superficial. Which is ironic considering the methodology of these quizzes and the results are the height of superficiality. They’re fun. They are. It’s a kick to see the final result and compare it with what you think of yourself. When I took the Euro-personality quiz I was convinced I was going to come out with French or Italian. I was thrilled when I saw the British result as most of you know what an unmitigated anglophile I am. But is it telling me who I am or should be? Are there people who are subconsciously absorbing the results of these quizzes to build an identity because they are uncomfortable of the one they have, or even unsure or unaware of their identity. How we view ourselves has profound impact on how we relate to others and our world. Is Facebook providing a concrete demonstration that we have become isolated from not just other people, but from ourselves? 

Which brings us to community. It sounds a little patronizing to ask if a social networking site is addressing the need for a sense of community. Community is social networking, but then it is also a bit more than that. Social networking, to me, has the connotation of being rather self serving. The other people in a social network are there for your entertainment, potential career assistance, and personal affirmation. It feels good to post a status update, a comment about what is happening in your life or a thought you’d like to share with others, and have thirteen people comment on it. It can feel quite horrid to post a thought and have no one acknowledge what you felt was important enough to say. 

Community is a much deeper bond than social networking. It is mutual interdependence in which we acknowledge our responsibility to others as well as their use to us. Community is a web of interconnecting and overlapping circles of care and concern as well as the relationships with which we have the most impact. I spoke last month about cosmopolitanism and our ability to affect virtually anyone on this planet, but also pointed out we have greater impact within our more immediate surroundings. With that ability comes an even higher degree of responsibility. 

The internet, and sites like facebook, make it incredibly easy to feel a sense of communal participation without moving our seats out of a chair. But is this connection substantial enough to experience profound benefits of community? It isn’t. Nothing replaces the rewards that come with the effort of physical contact. Sure it takes more energy, more time and entails perhaps a bit more emotional risk to reach out to someone in the “real world,” but this depth of commitment has the power to transform you in ways an internet conversation has no chance of ever hoping to achieve.   

Of course, there is a time and a place for everything. I’d be a complete hypocrit if I stood here issuing a devastating criticism against Facebook and the like because I use them myself. However, it is a matter of perspective and taking care to be fully aware of why we utilize such websites. I do enjoy the privilege of having friends and acquaintances from around the world provide me with little windows into their lives. But when it comes down to what really matters, you cannot hold a dying friend’s hand and discuss life’s triumphs and regrets in a status update or a wall-to-wall post exchange. 

Which brings me to the third need I believe Facebook taps into, and that is the need for intimacy. I don’t think I am reading too much into it when I point out that there is a very good reason why at Facebook you don’t invite, suggest and accept acquaintances, people, users, or accounts. Facebook calls them friends. At the moment I have 124 “friends” linked to my Facebook account. I’m going to guess that is either an average or below average figure. Who here honestly believes I have 124 friends that I can count on in times of true need? 

We do have friends come in and out of our lives. We move away from one another, but physically and emotionally. When we marry, have children, join a congregation, change jobs, we naturally shift from one circle of friends to another, that may overlap with the one we left or it may not. This is a natural evolution of friendship. On the other hand, we may find ourselves unable to make, keep and maintain abiding friendships even when our life circumstances are relatively stable. That’s a problem and not an uncommon one. Unfortunately, it’s a problem that the superficiality of friendship on Facebook exacerbates, albeit probably not intentionally on the part of the site designers. 

We live in a disposable culture. We all probably know that intuitively, we just don’t choose to think about it too closely. Paper plates, styrofoam cups, disposable diapers, but people too have become disposable commodities. We see that in the way the business world has rendered humans resources. The ease of obtaining a divorce and lack of social stigma for the divorce is a disincentive for couples to work harder to reconcile differences. Is it any wonder that one little disagreement and a friendship is shattered forever? Too often, a loss of one friendship has a ripple effect as the two embattled parties enlist supporters to their cause and fracture groups of friends. i.e. communities. We have seen this happen in the workplace, our congregations, our homeowner’s associations, our homeschool support networks, etc. 

This disposable attitude towards life has profound repercussions in all that we do, all that we experience and all that we are. It is a massive barrier to intimacy, which is the third need I think Facebook addresses, at least superficially. Intimacy is where identity and community come together. When we know who we are, how we fit in, and are surrounded by those we respect and trust we experience intimacy. We believe our holding environment is safe enough for us to expose what matters most. Intimacy is a risky proposition because we are vulnerable people. Humans deeply care about what other people think of them. Those who claim to be immune to such self-centeredness are not fooling anyone, lease of all themselves. The toughest soul in the world is going to be hurt when he or she finds out that a particular individual has a negative opinion about him or her. It is remarkably easy to be helpful and friendly. It is shockingly difficult to be a true friend. 

Facebook has several inherent limitations to fostering true friendship, the least of which is the potential for physical distance between account holders. This is a public website, and although account settings can be adjusted to different privacy levels, privacy is a legitimate concern. In fact, the site has been compromised several times and is the victim of a very specific virus right now. PC World December 5, 2008, Facebook Virus Turns Your Computer Into a Zombie, Cnet News,  ABC News, April 23, 2009, Facebook Fight Phishing Attacks.  A contributor to Crazytoon.com on May 7, 2009 said, “If you are a facebook user, please be aware that mygener.im virus is spreading quickly on facebook. From what I have seen online so far, it seems to redirect to a site that probably is stealing data from you computer and/or installing trojans.” I don’t know what Trojans are, but if they have anything to do with Homeric legend, it doesn’t sound like something you want in your computer. 

Even for those who are savvy enough to avoid viruses that infect social networking sites, the public nature of the site with the wide circle of so-called friends is an environment antithetical to fostering a deep experience of friendship. So facebook is a great way to stay in contact with people, but a horrible way to be connected with people. We can share ideas, but not a meal. We can express sympathy, but can’t provide a flesh and bone shoulder. We can spread our thoughts, but not really spill our guts.  

Our Unitarian Universalist principles affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations. I think it behooves us to remember that justice, equity and compassion are all impossible without the important context in which they reside. You can’t act justly, equitably and compassionately without human relations. 

Those of us who will have the leisure to contemplate our passing when the time comes will inevitably have regrets. Maybe we’ll wish we had traveled to Australia, learned a foreign language, danced with the Metropolitan Ballet, but hopefully we won’t regret the easy stuff. Do we really want to chastise ourselves for not being there when a friend had surgery, or a fellow church member’s parent died, or a sibling experienced a painful romantic breakup? How easy is it to just be there for someone else. Just be there. Just be. 

At this time I am going to ask you to join hands with the people next to you. 

The hand in yours belongs to a person

whose heart is sometimes tender

Whose skin is sometimes thin

Whose eyes sometimes fill with tears

Whose laughter is a beautiful sound

The hand that you hold belongs to a person who is seeking wholeness,

And knows you are doing the same.

As you leave this sanctuary

May your hearts remain open

May your voices stay strong

And may your hands remain outstretched.

Peace Be With You.

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Further Discussion