facebook and the primate mind

Is Facebook really so bad? Really like crack- foreign to the body and unnatural? I'd like to argue in most ways, no. Granted it's via computer, a technology outside our being (for now) but in all other ways, it's organic. I'd dare to say ancestral and an answer to human drives.

What's the nature of Facebook? Key elements:
1) Social
2) Everyone is in (or can be in) everyone's business
3) Opportunities for fame or at least feedback in status updates
4) Some control over one's image

It's like an upgrade over the way we lived for most of our existence, since primate ancestors, really- in social groups. It's even theorized that's how we became such complex creatures- expanding neuron connections to deal with complicated social structures. Our deepest brains are at home being surrounded by others, constantly interacting, receiving feedback, being a part of something bigger than ourselves. And I think that's something we are missing in our day-to-day modern world. Most of us work in cubicles, or study at desks, in our own space and our own heads. We live alone or with just one other person, in cities where little deep or continuous interaction takes place. The social side of our brain is craving connection and complex relations to others.

The upgrade is, of course, our ability to filter, to go off-line, to ignore. That's much harder in person. In a tribe or even a small town, a bad day is difficult to hide from the group as is our dislike for someone. There's no opportunity to put up our best picture as we muddle through bad hair or a bad mood. We speak a lot more and say really uninteresting, occasionally socially awkward things, instead of being able to reduce interactions to well thought-out quips and responses. Facebook offers the sweet filter to cut that stuff out and try to just put a best foot forward. And that's natural too. We want to be liked, be thought of as always witty, and socially brilliant. There's nothing wrong with that. Where else, really, do we get that chance? And I'd go so far as to say that our influx of media, where lines are scripted and hair/makeup is prepared before the lights go up, we somehow see this as a little more normal.

So why keep beating ourselves up over Facebook love? Interaction can be fun. It feels good. Not because it's a drug but because it's what we need as humans. I say embrace your addiction and know it's feeding you! Just so long as it doesn't get in the way of what we really need- awkward, real-time, face-to-face connection- the scary stuff that wakes us up and make us grow. Cheers Facebook and all those who love her.
_______________
Improvements to make before posting on Facebook-
1) Can more be done with "Facebook" and "face-to-face" interaction. Something to do with book? Play on words?
2) Add something about controlling who is your circle and how they are usually not strangers
3) Something about people from all over your life, who knew different parts of you and the different stages you went through. Like a small town where you grew up or a tribe that's seen your whole life. Comfort in that.