My parents' generation did acid. My generation does Facebook.
Drugs and social networking sites both function similarly to deliver a superficial reality, a diversion from the mundane. At least drugs provide a high. What is Facebook's high?
Facebook, like a heavily addictive drug, can, for some people, run their lives. They check it during breakfast, again in lecture, again after lecture, 12 times while doing homework and then again right before bed. This column is taking a vast amount of self-control to write with the intense craving for a Facebook contact high looming in the back of my mind … or rather front of my mind.
(Takes a writing break to check Facebook.)
I can't help but wonder how much more productive I would be without it. In my Facebook-free fantasy, I would sit down to write a paper and not immediately get swept away with the thought that, perhaps, someone has written on my wall. Or that perhaps there are new tagged photos of me. I would instead have an uninterrupted stream of academic thought, finishing my paper in record time.
Alas, this fantasy world doesn't exist, and Facebook does. Thus I am left to wonder why our generation is so hooked on using social networking sites as pastimes.
I asked my brother, Adam Hein, why he logs on. "It's an ego boost," he said. "It makes you feel like you have a life even when you don't."
And for someone like my brother, a graduate of Chapman University's film school and a film production assistant who works upward of 12 hours a day, a momentary reminder that his social life still exists is comforting.
While most of us in college have hyperactive social lives, we still have nights where we have to blow off friends in order to do work. It is on those nights that I find myself most tempted to log onto Facebook. I suppose it's a comfort to know that even when I have stayed in to do work, I am still with friends, if only online.
The gossip aspect of Facebook, most often referred to as "Facebook-stalking" has become a widely accepted way to obtain intimate information about your peers, and I know quite a few addicts. Recently, when I mentioned to friends that I have a new boyfriend, the common response was "hold on, let me Facebook-stalk him."
The instant delivery of otherwise unknowable facts is another highly stimulating aspect of Facebook.
As thrilling as getting caught up in a virtual fantasy land is, we could just as easily be spending time participating in real interactions with friends. But Facebook facilitates real social interactions as well. The likelihood that you would be invited to half of the events that you are via Facebook, if it didn't exist, is slim.
And thus Facebook truly does stimulate your real social life as well.
The convenience has made junkies out of us all. It's convenient to sit down at your computer and click through pictures of friends you haven't seen since elementary school. It's satisfying to revel at your 500-plus friend count and imagine that you truly are friends with all of those people.
And all of these aspects are what make it so addictive. You can get carried away thinking about your plans for the upcoming weekend on top of all of the ego-stroking and friend-stalking. It is so much more satiating in that way than focusing on homework, and so we allow ourselves to be swept away by it all too frequently.
What did we ever do before Facebook? Did we find ourselves more productive, as I would like to believe we would be without it? No. We simply found other virtual ways to distract ourselves. We watched more TV, we played more video games.
Facebook isn't necessarily taking up more of our time, it is simply replacing the time we would have otherwise spent in front of the "boob tube." And at least Facebook has the benefit of networking, both for business and for pleasure.
I've got that itch again to check my profile. That desire to break focus and submerge myself in my synthetic social life.
I guess I'll just take another hit of Facebook. I'm not doing my homework anyway.
Natalie Hein is a student at UCLA.
