Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do Read online

  Still, many of us go to great extremes to ensure that we will not be alone with our thoughts. I remember when I was in high school, taking breaks from homework or walking to school and noticing the world around me. I went to Brearley, widely considered one of the top high schools in the nation, and while I credit my teachers, curriculum, and peers with the fantastic education I received, I think the time I spent alone in high school helped too. I had time to reflect and to absorb the information of the day. By the time college started, I was immersed in my phone and soon would be immersed in Friendster (RIP), Myspace, and Facebook. I don’t think I truly needed study breaks in college, as I only studied for five or six minutes at a time between checking my phone or Facebook. In high school, I remember sitting at my desk for six or seven hours, sometimes, without a single distraction. Today, I’ve barely opened my eyes and I’m on my phone; my iPhone reigns.

  There are now over 1.15 billion active Facebook users. The latest numbers on Twitter indicate that it has over 240 million monthly active users. Nielsen found that between 2003 and 2009, the total time spent on social networking sites went up 883 percent among all ages, with teens between thirteen and seventeen years old increasing their usage 256 percent in one year, “growing at a rate faster than any other age group.” They also found that the average teenager sends and receives more than seven text messages for every hour they are awake. Teenage girls send and receive about four thousand texts a month.

  If we assume it takes thirty seconds to read a text message, think of a response, and type a reply, then we can deduce that based on the numbers of texts they send, the average teenager or twentysomething spends roughly an hour to an hour and ten minutes of their waking hours each day texting. If we add to that (at least) three or four hours of time on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and similar member-community sites—Common Sense Media found that 25 percent of teens log on to their favorite social networking site more than ten times a day—we arrive at an average of at least four to five hours of electronic and social media communication per day. Combined with school, after-school jobs, socializing with friends, and hopefully a tech-free dinner once in a while, this number leaves the average young person with virtually no time to be alone with their thoughts.

  But it’s not just connection-crazed teens who are affected. All of us are spending more and more time in the digital world. Fifty percent of those I spoke with said they spend more than three hours on Facebook or Instagram per day, one out of ten said that they check Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter more than thirty times a day, and 61 percent confessed to checking these sites more than five times a day. According to Nielsen’s State of the Media report, Americans in general spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook over the course of 2011. It doesn’t take a social scientist to deduce that these studies dramatically underestimate the frequency with which we are on social media and our smartphones. Just look around. I’m looking around right now. It’s gorgeous outside but my parents’ living room could easily be mistaken for an Apple Store. My father sits with his iPhone resting on his leg while he plays Hearts online on his iPad. My wife is to the right, scrolling through Instagram for what I’m counting as the sixth time today. My mom, sitting to my left, is checking Facebook on her iPad while playing Words with Friends on her iPhone. And I’m on my MacBook Air writing about technology and social media changing our lives. I’ve left my iPhone in the other room but have just discovered that I can text from my iMessage app on my computer, so behind this MS Word window is iMessage, where I have texted nine friends in the last ten minutes. Oh dear. For me and everyone I know, the frequency increases every single day; if we’re working, the Facebook window is always open alongside our e-mail. We’re constantly refreshing the Instagram feed on our phones. These studies and polls are always one step behind.

  I wonder if staying constantly connected—by way of our screens—still means we are connecting on a human level. By eating up our time, communication devices and social media hinder us from being social on a person-to-person, face-to-face basis. And not only that, they may make us want to interact with people less.

  A June 2011 Pew Research Center poll found that 13 percent of us are occupied with our phones to “prevent unwanted personal interactions.” When we can just click a button to express our thoughts and read those of others, suddenly in-person interfacing seems a lot more annoying. Why spend twenty minutes talking on the phone, tying up your device so you can’t also be texting and checking e-mail, when a five-word text or 140-character tweet would suffice? I freely admit to doing things like letting the phone ring to “miss” a call, then waiting to respond with a follow-up text—even if I like the person who is calling! Texting is just so much . . . easier.

  But it’s not as though everyone is bound to complain—our friends don’t want us to call them either! The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 31 percent of American adults prefer to be contacted by text rather than an old-school phone call, and 55 percent of those who send and receive more than fifty messages a day—most likely avid texters under thirty—say they would rather get a text than a voice call. Our devices and all this software are supposed to enable connections between people, but on some level, they seem to be sabotaging the actual human-interaction part of our relationships—and many of us appear to be fine with only typing at each other. It’s far too annoying to talk on an iPhone because I always miss bits and pieces of conversations as I’m pulling the phone away from my ear to text someone back.

  • • •

  This screened-in stance is not only changing the nature of our relationships, it’s also altering how we treat and react to one other—and perhaps even our ability to feel the very human emotion we call empathy. Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar explains that “emotional closeness declines by around 15 percent a year in the absence of face-to-face contact” and I have found this to be true to some extent for me and my friends. We feel less guilty “breaking up” or disappearing on someone we meet or chat with online, especially if we have not spent much or any time with them in person. It’s easier to ignore people or not reply to their e-mails or texts when we don’t hear or see them. We don’t imagine them staring into their screens, waiting patiently for a response that may not come for days. We don’t have to hear if they are upset. It’s easy to forget there is a person on the other end if we don’t hear a voice.

  Once at my former restaurant, the Dalloway, one of our managers forgot to place a tequila order for a Margarita Monday party we were having and had publicized through every aspect of the social media spectrum. We had no tequila. If you can recall any of your experiences at the type of dive bar that is light on the tequila and heavy on the triple sec, you know that kind of margarita leaves much to be desired (and also leaves you with a hangover to end all other hangovers). I was livid. I had colleagues, clients, and friends coming. On the phone, when she called to tell me she had forgotten, I was cold, sure, but I knew I was holding back from saying what I really meant (she was terrible at her job as it was). When we hung up, I immediately found her name in my phone and began to text her. I called her sloppy, lazy, and helpless. I would only say these types of terrible things over text or e-mail, never in person or on the phone. I am not even sure I meant the things I was saying, and when she repeatedly typed back “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry,” I felt no remorse. The fact that she had a face, feelings, a heart, was the farthest thing from my mind. All I saw was the screen I was typing on, and clicking “send” had no equivalence to actually speaking the words to someone’s face. I would never have said those things out loud!

  When we are constantly plugged in and our thoughts perpetually interrupted, I wonder if it’s not just our minds that are hijacked but our empathy as well. Whenever I have to confront an awkward situation, the people around me all say the same thing: “Just text it.” I remember being in high school and being given great advice in the midst of a conflict, which
was to drop whatever I was doing, find the person with whom I was in disagreement, and face the situation head-on. Now we can sit home and write an e-mail or text them! Situation solved, until you’ve lost your friends and everyone hates you.

  The manager at the Dalloway had made a mistake and ruined a party, but I had launched a texting campaign against her as though she had set the restaurant on fire. It’s easy to escalate when there’s a device mediating our interactions. Words are so easy to say when you aren’t truly saying them.

  Beyond saying things we come to regret and hurting people we don’t mean to hurt, the other issue with “electronic daggers” is that they leave a paper trail. Within moments of our conversation, the manager had screenshotted my harsh words, sent it to another manager and three bartenders, and then texted, What a bitch. Okay, I had been a bitch, but she was stupid to share that with my employees. All four of them, it turned out, hated her, and screenshotted her screen shot and texted it to me. I did the only thing someone in my generation would do. I screenshotted their screen shot of her screen shot and texted it to her. She quit. I still had no tequila.

  In Psychology Today, Maia Szalavitz writes about a report based on the answers to a survey on empathy administered to fourteen thousand college students that found empathy had dropped by 40 percent. The report analyzed data recorded over thirty years and measured empathy with certain questions. For instance, compared to students of the late 1970s, students today are less likely to agree with statements such as “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” Szalavitz expressed shock that the students did not bother to alter their answers to even appear more compassionate. “If young people don’t even care about seeming uncaring, something is seriously wrong,” she writes. But why is this happening? Szalavitz speculates that perhaps it has something to do with all the time we spend with our digital devices. “You can’t learn to connect and care if you don’t practice these things . . . Though social media is an improvement on passive TV viewing and can sometimes aid real friendships, it is still less rich than face-to-face interaction.”

  I’ve found that if I read bad news on a screen (via text or Facebook feed or via other social media), I am not as connected to it emotionally—I may think about it for a moment but then I move on to the next post. In contrast, when someone calls me and tells me the news directly, I can perceive the sadness or panic or whatever emotion they are experiencing in their voice—I feel that. Through the veil of a monitor, I don’t feel the same kind of compassion. On social media, we are being exposed to so much information all the time that I’m not even sure if we’re fully capable of processing it, that we truly feel the compassion we as humans should. I wonder if we are more willing and able to toss relationships aside, especially those that primarily live online.

  A couple of years ago, a Swedish girl named Clare approached me with a Facebook message. I usually ignore messages from strangers, but for whatever reason, I answered this one. It could have been because I was bored, between girlfriends, or having a (second) bottle of wine. For whatever reason, I replied. We wrote back and forth, which quickly turned to Gchatting, actual e-mailing, text messaging, and finally, talking on the phone. We were in touch about six or seven times a day, and always before we went to sleep. We video-chatted a few times, and I was convinced that she was every bit as beautiful as her profile photos had implied. It felt like the beginning of a real relationship. Our conversations (online and live) were open and flowed well. It seemed like we were building something. Clare was getting ready to come to New York for an internship with a fashion designer—which she had arranged long before she reached out to me—and I was excited to finally spend time with her face-to-face.

  But three weeks before she was set to arrive, I met someone—in person. We started dating and before I knew it, I was making excuses to Clare as to why I was no longer available at the times we used to speak. She began to contact me constantly, trying to find out what was going on. She called, I screened. She wrote, I ignored. She Gchatted, I made myself “invisible.” For all intents and purposes, I dropped off the face of the earth. It was far too easy. I know that I would never have been able to ignore Clare if I had met her in person and built a real-life bond with her, but because we had spoken primarily through our technological devices, it felt less wrong to shut her out this way. I know it was rude, but, even though I’m not proud of what I did and still feel guilty when I see her status updates on my feed, it also didn’t seem unacceptable.

  When we meet someone online, a connection can feel real, but at the same time, we usually feel less obligated to treat someone who’s basically a string of texts and videos and pictures with respect, compassion, or empathy. It isn’t until we actually meet these people face-to-face that we grant them true compassion and human respect. Many relationships that begin in the digital realm are self-serving and easily disposable. We use online relationships (platonic or romantic) to project ourselves and be seen in a way we wish we could be seen in real life. It may be real friendship for one person, but for the other it’s often just an escape or a way to pass the time between real-life boyfriends or girlfriends, so when life gets better and we no longer need the distraction, the person on the other end loses what they may have considered a real friend. In a virtual world, friends are easier to manage because they are only avatars on a screen.

  • • •

  We may have three thousand friends on Facebook, ten thousand followers on Twitter, thousands of followers on Tumblr, and one hundred fifty “likes” for every photo we post on Instagram, but it doesn’t mean we’re connecting to other people in a meaningful way. In a New York Times article by Jenna Wortham, a number of people described the social emptiness that can result from letting our online connections stand in for face-to-face ones. One young woman said, “I wasn’t calling my friends anymore . . . I was just seeing their pictures and updates.” Several told Wortham socializing on social media made them feel more alienated. And yet, it seems that many people are more interested in having variety and frequency of contact, rather than building real, in-person connections. Are we poised to become a generation of sociopaths, completely shut off from the world of human emotion?

  It isn’t just about being disconnected from real feelings though; Facebook and Instagram do create one true, real feeling for me: they make me lonely. Just last week, I was doing my usual fifth scroll of the day through Instagram (ya know, around eight A.M.), and I came to a photo uploaded by my friend Donna. Kelly! And Brandon! Emily was there! And Dylan! Is that Steve in the background!? They were all there! Where was I and why was I not invited!? Panic. I kept scrolling. Now an upload from Steve. A group shot. They were having so much fun and I had missed the best night ever. But why had I missed it? Why hadn’t I been invited? Did they all hate me? I was convinced that they did. I kept scrolling. It was quickly becoming masochistic. Next was an upload from Kelly. This was the worst one: a video. So much shouting, so much laughter. I kept thinking about how many other nights I had missed out on. I felt so lonely.

  Here’s an even more excruciating example: About four years ago, I introduced my four best friends to one another. I basked in the fact that I had connected them and that they got along splendidly. I was dating Samantha at the time and it also turned out that our respective friends got along. And so we had a happy group of twelve or so, attached at the hip and always hanging out. Years later, and in a less-than-graceful fashion, Samantha and I broke up and the group split down the middle. We maintained our respective friend groups, except for one or two who defected from the groups and switched sides (traitors!). While my most loyal friends never became close with my ex, they did stay friends with my ex’s friends and the defectors as well. Every so often when a birthday or a celebration for one of the other group’s members comes along, I am faced with the dreaded Instagram of everyone I introduced ye
ars ago and the two groups that split down the middle all hanging out without me. You see, according to the universal laws of bad breakups, I can’t be invited—especially because my new significant other would certainly come with me. But my friends are fair game. And so I woke up the other morning to a photo posted on Instagram, uploaded by one of the defectors, of my four best friends who were at a party. Not just any party. My ex’s birthday party. I’m sure there were fifty more people who attended but of course this photo contained the only people who would make me anxious and depressed. I spiraled into the kind of Internet anxiety and depression that can make you positive that you suddenly have no friends or that you’ve moved down the virtual totem pole of your social life. After maniacally texting my best friends and asking about the night, I realized that the photo was just a simple snapshot of a two-hour night, that no one was any closer or less close than before, that everyone was home by eleven thirty P.M.

  Just as our real friends can make us feel as though they are fake friends on social media, as I felt that morning seeing the “defector’s” Instagram, our “friends” on social media can often mask themselves as real friends, diluting the actual connections we have with our real-life friends whom we talk to on the phone or go out to dinner with. My friends aren’t close with my ex, but because of social media, I convinced myself that they were. As Bill Keller wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “the faux friendships of Facebook and the ephemeral connectedness of Twitter [are] displacing real rapport, real intimacy.” Perhaps all the chatter we slog through on a daily basis is just “virtual clutter” that is not truly connecting us. So many of us rely on social media, Facebook, smartphones, and technology for the bulk of our communication—but despite all this “connection” (or maybe because of it), we’re not only experiencing less substantial relationships, we’re also feeling more depression and loneliness.