Facebook addicts anonymous

Hi, my name is Ashley. I am a Facebook addict. There. I said it. This has been a secret that I have been trying to hide from others and deny to myself for almost three years. On the surface, I am a conscientious student at an elite university, but, secretly, I struggle with my addiction every day, and, on some bad days, every hour.

It all started my senior year of high school. After having a bad experience with MySpace, I had sworn off Internet social networking for good. MySpace, with its seductive flashing colors and music, had lured me into a black hole of wasted afternoons and creepy messages. But I became so used to frequenting the site that I realized I was clearly dependent on it. Only a month after I had quit MySpacing, my friends started raving about Facebook.

At first I held my ground. There was no way I would get sucked into Internet stalking again. I was above the influence. Good students like me didn't do things like Facebook, only socially awkward kids did. MySpace was only a brief mistake. As people kept telling me to sign onto this site, I found out that almost half of my senior class was involved in Facebook-ing, a fact that made me begin to worry about the social health of my peers.

My friends assured me that Facebook wasn't dangerous; "Ashley, it's fine," they insisted, "It's just a cool thing to do." But I wasn't persuaded until my older brother, a recent college grad, said to me, "What? You're not on Facebook. What are you doing, Ash? It will change your life. It will make your college experience." (Oh, how true his words would turn out to be.) That night, intrigued by what my older, and wiser, sibling had said, I joined Facebook. He wouldn't lead me astray, right?

Don't get me wrong. I do not blame my brother for my affliction. Facebook can be very positive when used responsibly. Where else can you connect with your friends, find your long-lost sandbox gang, view all your friends' pictures of events, create events, market causes, share posts and retrieve phone numbers from your friends after you drop your cell in a toilet? Oh, and you get to make neat statuses informing people of your every thought at any given moment. Yes, Facebook is amazing. But don't be deceived. It has its perils too.

At first Facebooking was just a little thing I did at night to keep in contact with my friends. I quickly learned that Facebook was so much better than AIM, my go-to means of communication for the past five years at that point. I do not have to commit to conversations like I did on AIM, nor do I have to actually know the person I am talking to (beyond their first and last name) on Facebook. I can actually peer into conversations between strangers, see pictures of people I barely know at parties I did not know about and find out which community college my third-grade bully is attending and make fun of this in concealed Facebook messages to my friends. In short, Facebook is the life I want to lead. I now have all the dirt on my peers at my fingertips. I feel almost like God, viewing people's lives through my computer screen.

The rush of knowing everyone's business at the click of a mouse helped me cope with my new life as a college student. As college called me to take on more than I could imagine, the ability to sit in the passenger seat was alluring. I could sit back, log in and watch other people live their lives, and not live my own.

But this new escape was taking a toll on my life, especially socially. My conversations with other people became awkward, like when I would ask people how their weekend went, without revealing that I already knew about it through Facebook. I realized my voyeurism had reached its apex when I was able to name random people I saw on the Quad without having met them because of their frequent appearances on my crush's wall.