But when my then high school students pleaded with me to join Facebook in 2004, I declined. I had made myself accessible to them in any number of other ways. I felt no need to be on Facebook.
Then, a few years later, my friends and peers began joining Facebook. But showcasing my life in that mingled fashion to both my students and my friends did not appeal at all. I wasn't interested in my students knowing "my life," and I wasn't interested in my friends getting involved in my professional world.
Then, a few years later, I was no longer teaching much, and my friends had begun treating Facebook as an essential to life: "What? You're not on Facebook? How will you know about the event? I can't be bothered to be in touch with anyone who's not on Facebook."
Really? Well, that did not appeal either. I kept myself apprised of (most) events anyway. I kept in touch with (most) people anyway. A few kind folks clued me in to the Facebook notifications I was missing. And things were good.
Eventually, a former student gave me the credentials to access a spoof account she'd created. That is, it was a real account, but she only used it to show people pictures, as opposed to all the other nonsense (er, important communications) that populated her regular page (sorry, that's a slur on FB, not on my former student's interests, which are far from nonsense). With access to that account, I became "friends" with several other people over the course of a couple of years, each time for the purpose of seeing pictures on their respective pages.
But I wasn't interested in being "on Facebook" for real, or as myself. Though I was no longer bothered by the privacy issues, nor particularly bothered about being out of the Facebook loop, I was certain that it would be what a cousin recently dubbed a "time suck." I have encountered a lot of people from a lot of places over the years, and I know myself well enough to think it realistic to fear spending hours upon hours researching the lives of people I went to first grade with - despite not having been in touch with them since, and not having any interest in knowing them now.
So...with time comes foolishness (er, wisdom). Over several months, I found myself using my former student's mock account to pay attention to all kind of things that were "happening" on Facebook. Events, yes. But also debate. And connection. For the first time, I began to feel like I was missing out, and minding it.
Given this nature of this blog, it will not surprise you to hear that it took me several weeks...hmm, months?...to decide to put up a profile of my own (well, I converted the mock account, with my former student's blessing). I weighed a lot of pros and cons, and spent some time figuring out the privacy settings before releasing anything. But my former students, as you hear, are now my friends for real, so I'm not hiding from them - I just needed to learn the system. And indeed, reconnecting with a virtual community of people I really do know, just not recently, has been valuable. I've enjoyed the surprise of discovering old friends who now live close, so the "virtual connection" is not as personal as a face-to-face, but it has led to more than one real live liquid cup of coffee.
For all the benefit, I'm still ambivalent. The "time-suck" factor is real, but not as bad as I expected. I think it would be hard to choose to take myself down from there now that I'm up (though a friend who opened a profile the same night I did after years of avoidance took his down as a matter of self-preservation!). For now, I'm getting a feel for it, and playing around with how much (rather, little) I want to post. And enjoying the people...when I'm not dismayed by them. Bottom line: not a bad decision under the circumstances the propelled me there, at least for this time, and I trust that the degree of my Facebook use will shake down and normalize as I continue...
(Posting here over the past month has suffered for it though. Apologies.)
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