I hate that I've now been using Facebook for 10 years

My first Facebook profile picture, taken when I was 13. Aw. 

Have you ever seen the show Hoarders on A&E? You know, the one about people who accumulate so much stuff in their homes that they can barely move around, much less live normal lives? Well, I have a confession: I am a hoarder. Not the sort who keeps old newspapers and spreads them around his home, of course (or not yet, anyway). I am, rather, a hoarder of memories. I dwell far too much on the past for someone with so much of his life ahead of him, and am obsessed with collecting records of my experiences. I do this not so much to look back on them as to prove that they happened at all.

The digital world makes memory hoarding both easier and harder. It's easier because we leave traces of our digital selves everywhere we go: email accounts, social media pages, YouTube and Yahoo! News comments. It's harder for the same reason: It gives us too much to hoard, and little of true value. It was in sifting through some of these digital memories (specifically, old emails) that I realized something: I joined Facebook exactly 10 years ago today, on June 11, 2007, just after graduating 8th grade and just before I went to high school. I was hoping Facebook would not remind me of this fact, this pathetic parody of a meaningful anniversary, in its ongoing quest to make the site into more of a "community." But it did.

It's so nice when robots pretend to care about you. 

Facebook has changed a lot over the years. Back then, you had to be invited onto it by someone who was already there. And to be part of a network--such as, say, your high school--you also had to be invited by someone already in that network (thanks, Quinn Menard!). I secured both prerequisites, and, since then, I've been on Facebook, posting statuses--which used to be in the format of "*your name here* is_____--, uploading photos, commenting on friends' activity, discussing things in groups and fan pages, and whatever else it is that one does on Facebook. It would be foolish to deny that its influence has shaped me, has influenced the way I relate to people, and even tried to alter the way I view the world: Do I like your status or do I "like" it? Are you my friend or are you my "friend"? In a time-span when I have changed in so many ways, Facebook, of all things, has been one of my constants.

Over the years, I've tried to convince myself that I didn't need Facebook. Almost every year, I've given it up for Lent without much trouble. On multiple occasions, I've successfully reoriented myself to kick browsing Facebook way down my list of "priorities," eliding the fact that Facebook has somehow wormed its way into my list of priorities. And yet, for all that, I keep coming back. I only succeed in my Lenten resolutions because I know I'll be back soon enough. And I always am.

Why? Why do I keep coming back to something that wastes so much of my time, to something that stopped seeming new about 9 years ago? Conversations I've been having lately with a friend of mine whose parents didn't let him get a Facebook when he was younger, who then simply never became interested when he was older, point to two reasons. First, Facebook (and social media generally) has changed me. I suppose I'll never be able to prove this, since we don't flip between alternative universes or convincingly simulate them (yet?). But I think Facebook has given me a compulsion to share that I otherwise may never have had.  Facebook has, over the years, locked me into its IV-drip mode of information dispersal, convincing me that I must share every thought--of varying pointlessness--that comes into my own head.

The second reason I keep coming back is FOMO (fear of missing out). It is FOMO that binds us. FOMO that connects us. Now that I have been on Facebook for so long, it has become a sort of symbiote. It has convinced me, after all this time, that I exist as much on there as I do outside of it. And it has done so even though much of what happens on Facebook (and, again, social media generally) is, ultimately, irrelevant, meaningless, or, at worst, things you are better off not knowing about. And much of the stuff that social media are good for--staying connected with friends, learning major life updates--is possible via means (email, for example) that aren't so time-consuming and frivolous. I have become addicted to Facebook's IV-drip method of information dispersal. I have become convinced that every single piece of information its algorithms vomit into my news feed matters. And I have become paranoid of the entire world that I'd be missing if I even moderated by usage of it, much less gave it up completely. Facebook has warped me.

And it's been warping me for ten years. 

You might think from the above paragraphs that Facebook were capable of a kind of mind control. And maybe it is. Social media do indeed mess with our dopamine receptors, giving us pleasure with notifications and whatnot. But I don't want to deny my own agency here. I have been doing this for so long because I want to, however much I might want to deny it. In life, you make time for what you want to do; sometimes, though, we don't like what that reveals about our priorities: in my case, Facebook. Facebook has made me something I'm not, and it's elevated a triviality to a major force in my life.What would I have been without Facebook? Unlike my friend, I can never know. And I don't think it's been all bad.

Still, there are times when I wish I had never started using it in the first place. For all the old friends it has reconnected me or allowed me to stay in touch with, other people pop up I'd have rather forgotten. For all the dopamine-infused rushes of notifications, there's the pointless diversion of scrolling aimlessly through a feed of people who are probably spending most of their time doing the same. And for every time I log on and don't log out hating myself for wasting so much time, there are far more occasions on which I feel exactly that way. Technology is inherently neutral, and that means it can produce both good and bad outcomes depending on how it is used. But I sometimes wonder if Facebook's inherent structure makes it more conducive to the latter than the former.

And then there's Facebook's impact in the real world. It is now how most young people get their news. It is now a private company, and its users are the product it sells. It has manipulated the emotions of a select group of users, without their knowledge, as an experiment. It has likely negatively effected the self-esteem of users (especially young and female), even when it wasn't doing so on purpose, as in the aforementioned experiment. It plays host to snuff films. Its founder is probably going to run for president. It has changed the way young people behave and relate to one another. It is one of the five or so tech companies that will probably officially (as opposed to the current, unofficial arrangement) rule the world someday, along with Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. Is this a future we really want?

And yet, and yet...I am still here. I still use Facebook. So much of my pre-Facebook life exists only in scattered memories, photos, and documents that I feel like I barely existed before I got my Facebook account. The past 10 years of my life, however, are far clearer to me (and now, many young children will have their entire lives documented on Facebook). And how depressing it is that it took a social media giant to make my life feel real. I don't know what the future holds for me or for Facebook. I do know it is absurd that using Facebook has been one of the more consistent aspects of my personality over the past 10 years of use, a milestone I loathe. Whether that changes, whether I continue to hoard the digital experiences that count as memories for another 10, 20, 30 years, only the future will tell.

If this is how different I look after 10 years, who knows what 20 will do.

Although I'll have no choice when President Zuckeberg gets the "Mandatory Facebook Use Act" through Congress.