Facebook has really screwed up social order. Although it’s categorized as “social networking”, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that it can’t be used for social purposes. Facebook Timeline made that clear, as many of us are scrolling through the years 2006 and 2007, deleting careless statements that are probably harmless…just in case.

Facebook deceived us. We thought it was a place where we could have fun, joke around, get to know each other a little better. I read once that it is “the twenty-first century version of a ‘50s soda joint’. Except now…what happens at the soda joint leaves the soda joint.

Now, it just shows who’s desperate, who’s a political hothead, who’s rude, who’s arrogant. Not to mention that everyone else is watching, waiting for us to screw up on Facebook, so that they can gossip about us at a party or deny us a job. Does it matter if we’re not like that in real life? It’s a cutthroat economy. One wrong move from a Millenial, and the game’s over. Facebook has stripped us of our privacy. Nothing is sacred anymore.

You would think that all of us Millenials would know that the world is not a safe place, after Columbine, 9/11, the war in the Middle East. But somehow, we were comfortable enough to be lulled into a false sense of security. Facebook was just a trap, but we are waking up.

Yet, the most painful irony of all…we really can’t get along well without it. If there was a way, I’d do it. I’d live in that black hole of social ignorance, if I just thought that I could get a little privacy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve deleted my Facebook, thinking I’d be better off without it. There’s always one phone number I don’t have, one person I can’t seem to keep in touch with outside of Facebook.

How do you establish yourself as a leader without social networking? How do you market yourself? How do you organize? It’s a double-edged sword, with globalization and the internet. The world is at our fingertips, unlimited access, but can you use it before it uses you?

Somehow, life has become entwined with Facebook, like weeds choking a plant. Without the weeds, the plant could not support itself, but with them, its life is taken over.