The following op-ed appeared in Penn Live on 3 February:
I deleted my Facebook account and I’m glad
People often
quit their New Year’s resolutions by the third week of January. So far, I’m
holding strong on a recent life change that was less motivated by the turn of
the calendar. I deleted my Facebook account.
Matt Rousu,
dean of the Sigmund Weis School of Business at Susquehanna University, recently
published an economics study that determined the average Facebook user
would need an incentive of a $1,000 to give up his or her account. That is a
strong hold.
I was a very
early adopter of Facebook. In its nascent days, one needed an “edu” email
address to create an account, and nearly all initially were undergraduates.
During the first weeks that the paradigmatic social media site was opened to
users outside of Harvard, it was embraced by students at Sweet Briar College
where I was then dean. They encouraged me to check it out.
I created an
account to see what the fuss was about and, frankly, was underwhelmed. As I was
about to delete my new account, I noticed three friend requests. It seemed
insensitive to ignore them and, in my own way, I was hooked. Fifteen years
later, I had accumulated about 2,500 “friends” ranging from real friends to my
mother to students whom I knew passingly. Initially, it was remarkably useful
for connecting names and faces, a feature that now exists within university
computing systems. It’s unlikely then-student Mark Zuckerberg meant to create
an aid for college administrators.
In the past few
years, there have been increasing reports about the deleterious impact of
social media – Facebook in particular – upon our society. News stories have
shed light on foreign powers attempting to manipulate elections through
erroneous postings or hackers malevolently mining insecure user data. Beyond
those headlines, the greater harm may be the nature of contemporary social
media’s adverse effects on young people.
In her book, iGen,
Jean Twenge draws convincing correlations between the rise of anxiety and
depression among teenagers with the emergence of smartphones, their
interference with sleep patterns, and their impact on social norms and
behaviors.
In a recent
presentation, Jonathan Haidt, founder of the Heterodox Academy, shared data that
showed a significant escalation of anxiety and depression, specifically among
girls, who are more prone to bully each other through social media than boys
who tend to use physical aggression to bully. More broadly, the fixation on
social media is impeding social development.
Over the course
of my career in higher education, I have lamented seeing campus behaviors shift
from students once actively engaging with one another on the quad to
contemporary sightings of them walking silently together while busily thumbing
devices. They are doing a variety of tasks, though frequently trawling social media.
I realized that
maintaining an account and accepting friend requests signaled an endorsement of
these behaviors to my students, so I decided to delete my account. I don’t miss
it. My online disappearance has gone unnoticed by most (except my mom). Maybe a
few will follow suit.
I am adding the
few minutes I save to my morning exercise, so quitting Facebook really
will be good for me, but most importantly, it provides me an opportunity to
model positive habits for our students. That’s worth much more than a grand.
