In case you didn’t know, the entire sorority population at Wash U had to deactivate Facebook throughout the entire recruitment process, which lasted for about a week and a half. While I was dreading the feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the world, I came out of the experience having learned that I didn’t need to be as dependent on Facebook as I had come to be. By the end of recruitment, I even started to forget about Facebook altogether. Here are a few life lessons that I learned along the way:
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1. Real-life interactions are so much more enjoyable than Facebook chat: There’s nothing like some good old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. There are so many downfalls to communicating through Facebook chat: how do you convey tone? Is my friend gonna be pissed if she can see that I read her message and didn’t answer? These silly problems disappear when you’re actually having a real, genuine conversation.
2. It’s creepy and unnatural how easily we can stalk people: Many active sorority members who were going through recruitment and learning hundreds of new names of PNMS felt the urge to look these girls up on Facebook and “check them out.” Because we didn’t have Facebook at our disposal, our opinions of girls were limited solely to our interactions with them. This made me realize how weird and unfair it is that we so often judge people based off of their Facebook profiles, when often times they are completely different in real life.
3. There are so many better ways to spend your time: It is so easy to sit for an hour on Facebook, whether you are back-stalking your best friend or creeping on pictures of someone that you don’t know. When Facebook wasn’t an option to entertain myself, I watched some movies, did some reading for pleasure, and caught up with friends back home. Why don’t I do these things more often?! I found them to be so much more gratifying than constantly scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed.
If you’re feeling up to the challenge, temporarily deactivate your account and try to experience these things for yourself!
Article cover image via Facebook.com