I don’t like Facebook. In fact, I hate it. It makes my blood pressure rise, and often leaves me feeling depressed, angry or hopeless after spending any significant time on it. Yet, I keep going on it. Why?
I believe I’m mildly addicted to it for a couple of reasons. For one, I don’t get much time away from the house and work, so it really is the only way for me to connect socially to other adults outside of my husband and coworkers. I really do enjoy keeping in touch with friends or former classmates, seeing family pictures, sharing funny memes, etc. Although I will admit, it sometimes sparks envy in me. It often seems like others have a more exciting life, or a perfect family. I’m sure others feel that way too. But ever since Real World debuted on MTV in the early 90s, we’ve become a society of voyeurs. Reality TV shows took off at an alarming rate in the 90s and 2000s. For some reason, we became obsessed with the “real” lives of other people, whether celebrities or just regular folks like us. Facebook satisfies that yearning. We get to peek inside the lives of multiple people daily. Inevitably we compare their lives to ours. Since most people only put the highlights of their day on Facebook, we begin feeling as if our own lives do not measure up. We wish we had that much fun and adventure or that nice of a house. As a result, we find ourselves jealous, maybe even a bit…
