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Have you gone ‘Facebook sober’?

A longtime reader writes: I don’t know if this is significant, but I think it might be. The other evening as my tech head teenage son, Luke, drove me home after work, he announced that he’s off Facebook.  I’ve been “Facebook” sober for ten days,” he said proudly. “Why now?”  I asked. He mentioned that he’d seen some Youtube videos recently that […]

A longtime reader writes:

I don’t know if this is significant, but I think it might be. The other evening as my tech head teenage son, Luke, drove me home after work, he announced that he’s off Facebook.  I’ve been “Facebook” sober for ten days,” he said proudly.

“Why now?”  I asked.

He mentioned that he’d seen some Youtube videos recently that pointed out while you’re spending all your time on Facebook you’re missing out on a lot of real activities. It also is a lot of “me, me, me,” he added. “And that got me thinking.”

So my 18 year old is Facebook sober, and I wonder if the backlash is spreading, and some teens are beginning to realize that Facebooks friends are really no friends at all, and there is a life out there unfiltered by Facebook, their computer or smart phone.

By the way,  Luke’s Facebook usage is something we’ve always monitored and restricted. Unlike some of our friends who’ve don’t allow their kids access to the TV let alone an Internet-accessible PC, we’ve always thought that our job was to try and teach our kids the right online behavior, encourage self-control, and provide guidelines for safe net practices.  I think he’s finally beginning to “get” it.  Maybe other kids are, too.

Let’s hope. My niece Hannah disabled her FB account for this semester — this, after we had a conversation about the value of solitude (I don’t know that there was a connection in her mind, but the timing was interesting to me). I do have a FB account, but I almost never use it. I look at it as a hole that I could easily fall down.

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