Facebook Addicts 101

About 2 months ago, one of my best friends sent me an invite via e-mail to join a website called ‘Facebook’. I was curious, if a bit skeptical, but I signed up, not knowing what I was getting myself into. Dear lord. Let’s just say that Facebook is now at the top of my favourites list in Internet Explorer (just above my shiny new WordPress blog link). Every day I sign in, head to the home page and scan it for all the delicious new tidbits of my friends’ lives. It’s become a ritual, like checking e-mail in the morning. Get up, change and feed A, check e-mail and facebook, eat breakfast…I have been able to catch up with so many people I’ve lost touch with…friends from school, buddies from sports teams, past teachers and coaches…the list goes on. And this isn’t just some catch up e-mail and then it’s over. We’re a part of each other’s lives again, even if it is over the internet. We can see each other’s everyday status (MR is yet again unable to sleep…GRRR!, JB is planting flowers at grandma’s house, JM is eating pineapple), keep up to date with pictures and posted items, write on each other’s ‘walls’, tag each other in old photos, share laughs over the same videos on YouTube. You can even join groups and meet new people to share discussions with. ‘Little Bundles of Joy’ or ‘Addicted to House, MD’ or the always thought-provoking ‘I will go slightly out of my way to step on that crunchy looking leaf’. The possibilities are endless! Perhaps this will be just another internet phase, but maybe, just maybe, there is some deeper meaning to this time consuming website. It could just pluck us out of our heads down, eyes on the road, every day life, and open us up once again to the people we used to call friends.