I don’t have a Facebook page.
And I’m starting to feel pretty bad about that. After all, out of the 2.5 billion or so folks who have Internet access on our planet, 1 billion of them now apparently have a Facebook page. Or maybe it’s only 900 million, if you whack off 100 mil or so for all those fake or spammy or duplicate or dog-devoted pages that clutter things up. But big whoop, right? So there are only 900 million instead of 1 billion! That’s small compensation for a guy left out in the digital cold.
Am I the weird duck? The last grumpy holdout? The anti-tech zealot trying to make a personal point about the way digital communication is ruining our culture? Except, um, I’m an editor for an online publication. I spend countless hours working with code and content-management systems, interfacing with our IT department to make sure you can read what you need to read on this website. I might know more about how your Facebook page works than you do. I’ve been tirelessly tinkering with Plugged In’s Facebook page for years now, entering links and lists and questions right alongside my colleague Paul. I’ve set up my wife’s personal page and her business page. (And I’ve come up with a whole slew of reasons not to set up my daughter’s page.)
So maybe that’s why I don’t have a personal page. It feels a little too much like work. A little too much like I ought to be getting paid for posting all those little pictures of myself on my vacation. Or something like that.
Maybe I’m too old, at 39-plus-4, to take to this new way of conversing. After all, new Facebook users aren’t aging a bit. In fact, they’re getting younger. (Never mind what you might have heard about teens ditching the social network ’cause their parents all have pages now.) The median age of new users today is 22, compared to 23 in 2010 and 26 in 2008.
Or maybe I just don’t have enough friends. The newest stats indicate that the average Facebooker has about 600 “friends.” I’m not sure I even know 600 people. But I guess the real reason I don’t have a Facebook page is because I live in the United States. You see, the vast majority of Facebook’s users—81%!—live outside the U.S. and Canada. Crazy thought, that, isn’t it?
No, no, that’s still not the reason, is it?
But must I have a reason? Must I feel like a loser for not having a Facebook page? Is it such an integral part of the fabric of our lives that to not have one is now the same as not having a cellphone? (A subject I might need to tackle in a later post!) Must I have a respectable presence on Facebook just to keep suspicion at bay? Just to keep my job? (Or get another one?) Read what Forbes contributor Kashmir Hill recently had to say about that:
Anecdotally, I've heard both job seekers and employers wonder aloud about what it means if a job candidate doesn't have a Facebook account. Does it mean they deactivated it because it was full of red flags? Are they hiding something? The idea that a Facebook resister is a potential mass murderer, flaky employee, and/or person who struggles with fidelity is obviously flawed. There are people who choose not to be Facebookers for myriad non-psychopathic reasons: because they find it too addictive, or because they hold their privacy dear, or because they don't actually want to know what their old high school buddies are up to. My own boyfriend isn't on Facebook and I don't hold it against him (too much). But it does seem that increasingly, it's expected that everyone is on Facebook in some capacity, and that a negative assumption is starting to arise about those who reject the Big Blue Giant's siren call. Continuing to navigate life without having this digital form of identification may be like trying to get into a bar without a driver's license.
See what I mean? So help me out here. All of you who’ve personally avoided Facebook for lo these many years (since 2005!), give me a shout-out here. Tell me why you’ve stayed away. And then maybe I can figure out why I’m staying away.
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