Why I "shut down" my facebook page...
I have effectively closed my facebook page. I didn't close it entirely - I remain friends with my family and a few pastors I am close with. I enjoy using facebook as a family photo album more than anything else. We can put up pictures of our life and those memories are easily accessible to me via my computer or ipad. So I didn't want to close the account completely but today, I deleted about 350 friends.

I have enjoyed facebook because it enabled me to reconnect with hundreds of people from high school and college that I otherwise probably would never have seen again. That's been very cool and, if managed properly, is very good and valid. Its been neat to see how we've all grown up, caught up on lives and seen their children.

My decision to "privatize" my facebook is a personal choice. In no way, shape or form do I seek to judge anyone else and how they use their facebook.

My first nagging came about a year ago...I just found myself getting tired of it. I began to "manage" my friends - hiding posts from some where I grew tired of their comments (OK - red flag here...that's not good) but not wanting to "de-friend" them less they think I was a jerk (another red flag). But I just kept thinking, "I'm tired of this..."

I have tried to teach my daughters that this cyber world is not "real". Texting and facebook are not "community". Yet for most teenagers, they have come to believe that they simply cannot do without their connection to their world. Their phones are glued to their hands and texts and facebook posts are constantly being checked. Teenagers live their lives through their cell phones. That's not good. That's not healthy. They are addicted to being connected to their world. They begin to think they won't survive this world unless they are totally plugged into it.

I'm not a teenager but that is one protest I personally have with facebook and texting.

But my real issue has been this feeling of creeping into other people's lives. Peering. We open up our homes, our vacations, our events and our lives for the whole world to see. Others peer into our lives. We welcome them in to look at our lives and our families and they can begin to think "they've got life pretty good". Or...we can peer into our friend's lives and see their successes and their beach trips or Italy trips or lake homes and we can begin to think..."They've got life pretty good". Some of that is good. It is right to celebrate other's success and happiness but there is something here that just nags at me. I really can't put my finger on it but it is a new paradigm - this ability to look into our friends daily lives and their daily postings of their trials and success - and for me (and please don't take this in ANY way personally)...but for me, it just has started to trouble me.

It is a well documented fact that facebook has enabled many a marriage to break apart. It provides yet another vehicle to reconnect with former loves or to establish new electronic relationships. Sadly, it is being frequently cited in divorces as a major contributor.

So my nagging feelings have some justification. There are valid reasons to be very careful with this electronic world we live in.

And then there is time. I rarely look at facebook during the day but I'd fallen into the trap of checking it at night. I have an ipad and usually most nights, I have it with me while watching TV and I'll spend 10-15 minutes scrolling through facebook. Most Saturday mornings drinking coffee, I'll scroll through it. Time. I'm devoting a couple of hours a week...peering, looking and wandering through 350 people's lives. That is -- for me -- a lot of wasted time.

So I've rebooted. Cleared the decks. I'm sure I've offended some people with this. That certainly is not my intention. It's just personal. It's a God-thing for me. He very clearly gave me this direction (God does not particularly like our devotion to our worldly gods). I woke up Sunday morning knowing what I needed to do and I followed.