Coming back to social networks

As I wrote a few posts ago, my friend and I recently decided to take a month off the social networking
parts of the Internet. We decided that sites like Facebook, tumblr, last.fm, and Twitter were making our lives too complicated, and affecting the way we perceived ourselves (since everything we wrote could be viewed by large numbers of people).

Well, the month ended last Thursday, on April 9th. I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the experience:
- My friends' reactions were pretty interesting. One friend got angry: "Do you know how painful it is to see one’s measly 244 friend count drop to 242? You should warn me!” And another one was hurt: "I’m blocked from your Facebook. Is it something I did?”
- I was a lot more focused in getting my work done -- I didn't have the option of switching back and forth between the essay window and my Facebook window.
- I felt like I got to know people in a different way. I'm naturally an introvert, so I value one-on-one conversations more than I do large announcements (which I'm sure played a role in inspiring me to do the experiment to begin with). I found myself getting to know people I had assumed I "knew" because I was Facebook friends with them.
- I thought that leaving last.fm would cause me to listen to music in a different way -- I wouldn't be waiting for tracks to "scrobble" to a public profile. However, my listening habits didn't change. I listened to the same bands, and the same quantity of music.
- My phone plan? Allows 250 texts/month. My month off from Facebook? I used 502. Whoops.
- I didn't miss Twitter at all. In fact, I haven't logged back in, and I don't plan to.
- I didn't plan it this way, but the month overlapped with Spring Break (3/15-3/21) as well as my birthday (3/31). One would think I "missed" a lot of hanging out with old friends over break, and "missed" the slew of birthday wishes that show up on everyone's Facebook. But I was super busy over break, and my birthday felt more special when it was just the dozen or so friends who remembered.

My friend ended up going back to Facebook and Twitter after a couple of weeks; but as I said earlier, she's an intern at Newsweek and needed to find contacts for a story. (That, I think, says something about how much these social networking sites are a part of our lives.) I stayed away for the whole time, and I don't recall ever missing Facebook, Twitter, last.fm, or tumblr. However, that could be because I knew I was only going to be gone for a month.

In the end, I'm glad I took the month off. It convinced me that I don't rely on the internet to have a meaningful life (in fact, some dimensions of my life grew away from the computer), and it reminded me that I always have control over my relationship with new technology. Everyone should have that feeling.