In November, after some reflection, I deactivated my Facebook account with one liberating click of a mouse. I calmly skipped through automatically generated pages of assorted friends pleading for me not to go: “But Suzie will miss you!!!” Sorry, Suzie, but we were never that close anyway.

I kept this delicious secret to myself for a time and for a couple reasons. For one, saying you don’t have a Facebook is this generation’s equivalent to “I don’t have a TV,” which is code for “I’m a pretentious hipster,” an impression I try desperately not to give off. I also didn’t want people to think I was proselytizing them or trying to convert them to the anti-technology dark side. However, most importantly, I just didn’t want people to know how awesome it was. It was my party, and I didn’t want that clingy girl Suzie crashing it.

So then why am I sharing this fact now? Well, I’m back on the wagon (for practical reasons, but I still find myself on the site with no recollection of how I got there) and need community support to get back off. A side-effect of this will hopefully be other people drawing inspiration from my courage and letting go of their habits as well.

You may think that the addiction reference is in bad taste, but I genuinely think that Facebook can become an addiction. Think about it. One day, likely around five years ago, one of your friends told you about this new website called Facebook and asked you to join. Maybe as a young teenager you felt a little iffy about putting your name, picture and the name of your school online where all those scary people your parents warned you about could find you. But this website is legit, your friend says, so you go for it.

It’s fun for a while. You get a kick out of finally getting your and your friends’ witticisms out in the open where they can be rightfully appreciated. You give each other those little profile gifts like drinks and teddy bears and all that cool stuff Facebook had in 2007. However, truth be told, all that social posturing takes a lot of effort that could be much better deployed elsewhere, but you just can’t stop. You waste hours on it, counting likes and happy birthday posts, photos and friends.

However, soon all your efforts become rote and you start to get bored. One day Mark Zuckerberg turns your world upside down with a new layout, disrupting the routine and causing a pandemic of vague annoyance. Cue angry statuses and threats to leave Facebook forever. But the new timeline is kind of fun and you think you’ll stick with it, because you don’t really have a choice: You’re hooked!

The fact that you acknowledge that Facebook is a waste of time and energy and that the whole premise of it just creeps you out makes it all the more disturbing that the moment you go online, you feel your fingers drift to the F key, as if they don’t even belong to your body. You need to slap them away to keep yourself on task. It’s gone far beyond the realm of daily tasks like checking the weather or your email and has turned into a reflex.

And why are we so addicted to this pointless exercise? When you really think about it, Facebook is basically a time machine to middle school, and what rational person would ever want to revisit that most awkward of times? Someone is always better looking, or more popular, or funnier, or smarter, and you find yourself comparing yourself to them with masochistic delight. But who needs all that competition? Isn’t there enough annoying stuff to worry about without comparing yourself to other people, many of whom you don’t know all that well?

Part of my distaste for the social networking addiction stems from how it has damaged the way people communicate and function socially in real life. I find it incredibly ironic that in an era marked by the unprecedented potential for communication, people are still seeking ways to truly connect to one another. Obviously Facebook isn’t allowing its users to connect on nine levels of intimacy like eHarmony.

While people may have more “friends” than ever, people of our generation are among the most alienated in history. This alienation stems from the commoditizing of our social lives, a process by which social interaction stops being an organic function of human life and turns into something based unnaturally in consumption. The social lives of others have become products for the public to consume. All of one’s cards are out on the table, open for scrutiny from other people and even cause for stress, as instead of valuing the true friendships we have, we are constantly looking for more people to add to the collection to appear like we are socially skilled.

But does having more Facebook friends really make one more socially skilled? If it does, what does that say about people who have deactivated their Facebook or taken a break from the habit? Do they exist? Do they have something to hide? Or have they just uncovered the rehabilitating secret whose benefits have been lost on those floating in the stupor of social networking addiction?

I say drop the habit and find out for yourself.

Hannah Sparks is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected]