Life without Facebook more productive

(This letter is written in response to Marc McAfee’s Wednesday column, “Facebook actually anti-social.”)

I’ll be honest, I am not the most avid or faithful reader of the venerable Red & Black.

Also, if you were to poll my friends, they would inform you I am the most addicted to Facebook of anyone they know.

So upon opening up the paper Wednesday and reading McAfee’s column, I’ll admit I was intrigued, and only upon reading the column did I actually realize that not only was this McAfee a smart guy – he was actually right!

I just finished up a one week “Facebook fast” in which I went an entire week without any Facebook contact.

I don’t think I’ve had a more productive, drama-less week in my life.

The hours I wasted checking my profile, talking it up via Facebook chat or stalking others courtesy of everyone’s favorite news feed were suddenly free. I had time to do homework, go do things such as volunteer (stop by Tate Plaza and ask me about Power Vote) or simply to go outside and enjoy the beautiful October weather.

Regardless, the point is I had so much more free time in my life.

Since reading this column, I too have been compelled to delete my Facebook account, and who knows – maybe I’m just impulsive, maybe I was simply inspired by Mr. McAfee’s bold rhetoric to do something that I won’t follow through with.

Either way, I think we could all learn a little something if we took a little “Facebook fast” for awhile and realized there are 30,000 real life people on campus we can meet and interact with in person.

Don’t like what I have to say? Well you can start a Facebook group against me, but I’ll never know about it.

KYLER DENNIS
Junior, Athens
Business Management and Film Studies

Facebook offers ‘positive effects’

My jaw fell Tuesday afternoon while reading Marc McAfee’s ignorant generalization of all Facebook users, accusing us of “validating our relationships based on one personal Web page.”

I admit my aversion to “fake Facebook people” who manipulate the site in competition for friends or obtaining the most tagged photos, but even with the absence of Facebook, those people would still annoyingly exist in society.

My biggest concern with McAfee’s opinion was his total disregard for exploring the positive effects of Facebook and postulating all users as anti-social. Aside from using Facebook applications for school (creating study events and forming class groups), did it ever occur to McAfee that being “anti-social” is safer than giving your number to strangers in a bar?

We’ve all ventured downtown, our beer-goggles thick, and given our last names to the man/woman of our dreams, just to have our inebriated assessment negated the next day after a quick browse of their profile.

My only question for Marc is, Why are you suggesting students give their cell number to random, fellow bar patrons? At least you can block someone on Facebook, a service most cell phone carriers do not allow.

SAMANTHA JUNE SHELTON
Junior, Auburn
Management Information Systems