I Worry About Facebook

My primary motivation for starting an e-mail based newsletter is to decrease my dependence on Facebook. I haven’t blogged consistently in years so I have taken to social media to share my thoughts and my writing. I love the connections, both between real life and internet-only friends, that I have made on social media but I worry. While my corner of the platform is kind and welcoming, I worry that I can not stay on the site.

We all know the role social media has played in dividing our country. Sadly, for the past few years, the same thing has happened in our town. We have multiple Facebook groups all with the same goal of connection, support and information sharing. While these groups bear the name of our town, they are moderated by individuals. These individuals draft guidelines and enforce them as they see fit. Therefore, these group, as social groups do, have formed their own personalities, their own rules, their own definitions of what is socially appropriate.

Over the weekend, things became especially ugly on two of the groups and the moderators appropriately stepped in to quiet things down. This is noteworthy. These groups pride themselves on free speech and their light handed moderation in comparison to other groups in town with stricter guidelines and hence more strict moderation.

Since reading the posts this weekend, my mind has been swirling. I believe the moderator’s call to action came when the livelihood of a member was threatened. Upon viewing video footage of the member at a local protest, other members called out his actions as racist and said that he should loose his job. Things spiraled downward leading the moderators to write “when debate gives way to personal attacks and language that is deemed hurtful and hateful, it becomes our role to step in. “

In my opinion, the moderators took appropriate action but I am still left shaking my head. For years, I personally have been called hurtful and hateful things on these Facebook groups. For years, incredibly cruel and damaging things have been written about both personal friends and public officials on these group. For years, local projects and initiatives that I and others have worked hard toward and believe in have been viciously ridiculed on these groups.

If our girls wrote anything close to the types of things that have been written on these groups, I would be devastated. I would be disappointed and I would question what I had done wrong to raise humans who could be so thoughtless. I would worry, as our oldest enters into the college application season, that a prospective college would see her words and decline her admission. For years, this is how heartless and cruel and personal the attacks on these groups have been.

I know I should be grateful that action is being taken now. But I worry. I worry about the damage these groups have done to our village. And I worry about what social media has done to all of us. I worry that when we post or comment on Facebook we forget that the person we are talking about is real and in the case of our local groups, that person is a neighbor.

Like it or not, these groups have divided out town. And social media has played a significant role in dividing our country. In a time when it feels like it is awfully hard to hope, I do hope that what happened in these groups this weekend, is the beginning of a meaningful change. We need it.