FB Addict Kicks Habit, Lives to Talk About It

Many of you know exactly how powerful Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks can be. It's almost as if we -- Web 2.0 addicts, that is -- forgot how to speak to one another and instead communicate exclusively with our keyboards. Is this some strange new branch of evolution, a fad that's bound to die down or something else entirely?

If you're like me, you both love and hate the world according to Facebook (perhaps you even extend that love/hate relationship to the pusher himself, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, pictured). On one hand, it's a great way to catch up with old friends and long-distance relationships. But it also has become a compulsive ritual not unlike my thankfully in-the-past cigarette habit.

So I found it oddly comforting to read recovering Facebook addict Caroline Hocking's confessional op-ed at the BBC News Web site. A self-described FB addict, Hocking decided to reconnect with the real world by quitting Facebook cold turkey. A user for two years, Hocking deactivated her account when she realized she had become a "Facebook fiend" and no longer enjoyed a once-whimsical pastime:

"I'd got sucked into semi-stalkerdom and felt something akin to separation anxiety if I ever found myself offline for more than a few hours. What had been my favorite waste of time had morphed into a demanding and anti-social addiction."

But what she didn't anticipate was the shock and outrage of her "friends," who felt personally affronted by what she believed was a personal decision. "Why did you 'un-friend' me?" they'd ask. And as anyone who has left Facebook knows, the pixel-pushing social network makes it very easy to fall back off the wagon and rejoin.

So, to make a long story short (read her entertaining, candid account for yourself), Hocking needed a fix after just 10 days in the wilderness. She rejoined, but says the separation gave her a healthy perspective about social networking and that she now keeps her habit at arm's length.

"And if it all gets too much and I feel myself slipping back to my old ways," she said in the op-ed, "I can always take another break."

If only all of us could be so strong.

Photo courtesy of Elaine Chan and Priscilla Chan, via Wikimedia Commons