Facebook Makes Us Sad
It’s Monday, so we all probably just spent a decent chunk of our morning “liking” all our college friend’s engagement announcements on Facebook. Remember in High Fidelity when John Cusack asked “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” Maureen O’Connor discusses the 2014 version of that in “Do You Hate Facebook, or Do You Hate Your Life?” for The Cut. Taking a break from social media especially during heartbreak or stress is now a part of how we live now, but then doesn’t everyone have a friend that dramatically deactivates their Facebook only to ask for a friend’s login weeks or days later and still go on it all the time incognito?
Similarly, when New York Times writer Nick Bilton published back-to-back columns about the agony of using Facebook during his divorce and the importance of taking breaks from social media, I wondered if there were a causal link between the two. To find out, I messaged him on Facebook. “Absolutely,” he replied. “We have these drastically different lives that we live, and we act differently in all of them — work, significant other, friend groups, etc. — but they are all tied together through the internet. So when things go awry, the first thing we do is back away from the web to try to sort out what to do about it all.” This is why unplugging as a method for solving life’s woes can feel dramatic: It’s all or nothing.