Social Networking

I saw an interesting article today. It was talking about how social network sites are obviously all the rage but essentially are not good for our mental health.

The brain has an amazing capacity to forget, and that is actually a good thing. It is it's way of eliminating things that are not important and focusing on those things that are important. Imagine if you remember every single thing from your day, your brain would be on constant overload and would be in dire need of defraging (down at fraggle rock chh-chh).

The same goes with forgetting people an events. You need to forget some of them. Instead I have lots of "friends" on Facebook and get bombarded with status updates all day long. Skip a few days and I have accidently forgotten someone's birthday that I went to high school with and haven't seen since. Will they be upset? Should I send them a note? A few years ago that person would not have even existed in my mind and would be a faded memory. In fact, I may have never even thought of that person again for the rest of my life.

Ex-boyfriends should be a long distant thing of the past. But social networking allows you to see them, see what they look like now, see what their new girlfriend looks like, check out their receding hairline. Or even more awkward is if you and your ex's are not friends. You still have mutual friends, you know that each other exist but you will be damned if you are going to ask them to be friends (but I wonder why they haven't asked me? are they still not over me?) The answer should be who cares.

Sometimes worse than people are events. People throwing pictures up of drunken nights, weird outfits, or a picture that shows you with your finger up your nose. These snapshots of time are better left to the past. Yet, there they are in your face if you get "tagged".

I often make myself the police of Facebook for my younger relatives. I see things I don't like and send them a message. Pictures of them bonging a beer or pushing your cleavage together (which I have a few of myself, but in a shoe box) are not great to have as your profile picture. Digital files are forever and 3-4 years down the road, that picture may blow your chances of getting that internship.

It's healthy to move on and erase people/events from your memory banks. I currently have a weird social situation where this guy I met ONCE over 7 years ago signed up to be my friend. I said ok because I don't want to be rude. Now he sends me these invitations over and over to become a fan of his new business he's starting up. He's making t-shirts and ugly ones at that. He sent me a note and asked why I wouldn't join his fan club. I told him that I honestly didn't like his shirts and I didn't want to lie that I was a fan.

He wrote back and told me that he is creating them and selling them because his daughter has cancer and the shirts are to help support her therapy bills. Now, look, I'm the asshole. If Facebook wasn't even around I would have never seen or heard from this person ever again, but instead I'm guilted into liking his ugly shirts for his dying daughter.

These are the unhealthy mental games that this article was talking about. Your brain was designed to forget and move on, but unfortunately, most of us have become addicted to overcrowding it with people we normally wouldn't think of. Thus, causing me to lose my keys and spend less time with my kids than I should.