On being a Facebook holdout

Via Yahoo News, a piece by Jenny Wortham of the NY Times talks about the fact that Facebook are finding further growth more and more difficult, now that they have 2/3 of the US population signed up to the site. Some people, it seems, just don't want to be involved with it. Ms Wortham writes that they are now spending more effort (and advertising cash) on targeting Asia and Latin America. The main thrust of her piece, however, is looking at the various reasons people are giving for not signing up.

Since I am a Facebook holdout myself, this seems like an interesting topic to write about. I'm not a US citizen, but 58% of those online in the UK (and just under half the total population) are also members of Facebook, which is close enough - and I have certainly experienced some of the phenomena described in Ms Wortham's piece.

The first example was a man who encountered for the first time a woman who, by chance, happened to be a Facebook friend of some of his friends, and through that tenuous connection, he already knew a huge amount about her life and recent activities. That experience of knowing so much about someone despite never having talked to them, or even met them, before - freaked him out, and he quit the site.

Developing from this, Ms Wortham reports:

One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.

“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”

To be sure, the Facebook-free life has its disadvantages in an era when people announce all kinds of major life milestones on the Web. Ms. Elser has missed engagements and pictures of new-born babies. But none of that hurt as much as the gap she said her Facebook account had created between her and her closest friends. So she shut it down.

And then there are the inevitable privacy concerns.

Those who study social networking say this issue boils down to trust. Amanda Lenhart, who directs research on teenagers, children and families at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that people who use Facebook tend to have “a general sense of trust in others and trust in institutions.” She added: “Some people make the decision not to use it because they are afraid of what might happen.”

Another reason for resisting is the "social overload" factor:

Erika Gable, 29, who lives in Brooklyn and does public relations for restaurants, never understood the appeal of Facebook in the first place. She says the daily chatter that flows through the site — updates about bad hair days and pictures from dinner — is virtual clutter she doesn’t need in her life.

“If I want to see my fifth cousin’s second baby, I’ll call them,” she said with a laugh.

***

It is true for me that privacy is a major part of why I do not have a Facebook account. Given the nature and candour of some of my blog posts here, at And You Thought I Was Sweet? or on my tumblr, some people might find that a strange concern to have; but I at least try to keep my birth name out of the internet as far as practical, and try to maintain some kind of barrier between that and my use of Snowdrop Explodes as a name. There are, of course, things here that maybe it would not be comfortable for some of my family members to know about and perhaps a Facebook page on the "other" side of the divide would be better, but there are some real life people who straddle that divide in real life, who know me by both names, and whom maybe I would not want confusing how open I am here with how open I might wish to be on Facebook.

The point raised by Amanda Lenhart on this is an interesting one. It is true that I distrust many big organisations, especially those that are run with a profit motive. However, had Facebook done better with privacy in the past, then I might not be so sceptical about them now; also, had I the option to choose a pseudonym, I might feel more secure about my privacy and the ways I choose to live my life. This is a case of feeling that Facebook have lost my trust, rather than starting from a position of distrust. However, having seen reports of similar issues with sites such as Fetlife, I am inclining much more strongly towards distrust as the default stance.

However, my strongest reasons for being a Facebook holdout are closest in kind to those of Ashleigh Elser and Erika Gable.

I like the closeness I get from talking to folks on the telephone, or even from writing personalised emails to friends, family, etc. I don't particularly like the idea of having updates flashing up from all over the place, and I especially don't like the idea of updates flashing up from people I hardly even know! I am pretty strongly introverted, and so my comfort sphere in terms of friendship is to be close-knit and small. To be regarded as my friend, rather than just an acquaintance, takes a lot of time and trust, and shared experiences/talking about life, the universe, and whatnot. Most people I know, even most people I am quite close to, are still "acquaintances" in my mind, although I might in casual conversation call them "friends", imitating the way I see other people sue that term. But to "friend" someone on a site, I pretty much need to feel like I know them reasonably well, and have some basis for trusting them at least on the acquaintance level. Even that circle of contact is a pretty limited sphere, and that's the way I like it thankyouverymuch.

I kind of feel like to get very much use or value out of being on Facebook, I would need to put in more information about myself than I am comfortable with doing, and I would need to "friend" more people than I have any interest in befriending. I really don't need to know that stuff.

This is a variant on why I won't use Twitter (I actually signed up for it, but decided against using it). I am convinced that if I actually used it, then I would have no time or braincells left for anything else - or, there would be so few people I could be bothered following that I would get almost no use out of it. Plus, I really don't feel the need to update the universe on my doings throughout the day! If there's something interesting that happened and I want to share it with people, then I will phone, text or email the people I want to share it with.

Both Facebook and Twitter are, for me, "virtual clutter" that I don't need in my life (to borrow the phrasing of Ms Gable, quoted above).

Ms Wortham's piece then discusses the consequences that some folks experience from not being on Facebook:

Will Brennan, a 26-year-old Brooklyn resident, said he had “heard too many horror stories” about the privacy pitfalls of Facebook. But he said friends are not always sympathetic to his anti-social-media stance.

“I get asked to sign up at least twice a month,” said Mr. Brennan. “I get harangued for ruining their plans by not being on Facebook.”

I have had this too, although nowhere near as often as Mr Brennan describes (perhaps because I have such a small circle of friends anyway). However, my response is pretty direct, and yes, I have said this to people before:

"If it matters to you that I be there, then you'll take the time to remember I'm not on Facebook, and make sure you invite me by some other means. If it doesn't matter that much to you, then I probably don't want to be there anyway."

I imagine that I could lose friends like that, if I weren't so restrictive in whom I will count among my friends. It may be that the small size of my friends circle is in part because of this type of attitude, and people misreading it as aloofness or arrogance. It isn't either of those things, it is introversion (or even, in some people's terminology, "lonership"). I am happier on my own, and always will be, even though I do enjoy company every so often, and in manageable doses. So if I am not particularly wanted, then I am probably happier not being a part of a gathering or event where (I feel as though) I am only really there to "make up the numbers" to suit the hosts. If you want me, then make me feel wanted - I don't need to be the centre of attention (in fact, lonership/introversion being my thing, I will probably just want to sit in a corner on my own for most of it!) but I do want to feel like I am contributing something that is valued. For want of better words, it basically boils down to, "I want to feel wanted" (see also, my attitude on dating and who does the chasing...). There is also the fact that, for me, attending any kind of social gathering requires heavy effort, and frankly, I'd like there to be some kind of effort made in return to acknowledge that and show that it's valued that I should do so - inviting me personally, instead of by some general Facebook update, goes some way to making me feel that.

Susan Etlinger, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, said society was adopting new behaviors and expectations in response to the near-ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks.

“People may start to ask the question that, if you aren’t on social channels, why not? Are you hiding something?” she said. “The norms are shifting.”

This is something that I have already seen referenced a few times on the dating blogs that I read nowadays, with some people thinking it's some kind of "red flag" if a potential date doesn't have (or at least, says they don't have) a Facebook account, because of that feeling, "what are they trying to hide?"

As it happens, the article mentions this, with Erika Gable (quoted above) saying that it's the one thing she does use Facebook for - she gets friends to look up her potential date for her! On the other hand, Chris Munn says that it's easier to date because you still have stuff to talk about to find out about each other, instead of reading it all on Facebook beforehand.

As discussed, I kind of am hiding something by not being on Facebook, but I'm open about that, and by the time any potential date is genuinely a potential date and not just "some woman I emailed on OkCupid/Plentooffish/some kink site", then it's likely that Google will have brought her here already, or I will have volunteered the link myself (on the kink sites, I actually offer the link already, since the kink stuff is the main thing I hide and the fact it's a kink site pretty much tells the would-be date that I'm kinky already!)

I also kind of view it as a screening technique: in a version of the "I want to be wanted" argument used for expecting folks to let me know by other means that they want me at their party or event, I feel as though not having a Facebook account is a way of making sure that those potential dates that progress to being actual dates actually care about me as a person, and aren't just looking to tick things off a checklist before deciding, "you'll do!" I like to talk a lot before going on a date, either by email, IM or telephone, so if you have your checklist handy then you can try to do it that way. I just want the personal touch, to feel like it is actually me you're interested in.

So, there you have it: I am not on Facebook, partly out of concern for privacy but mostly because I prefer the personal contact of actually talking or writing to someone.