Article: Is Facebook Killing our Souls

A couple of months ago, I fasted from all social media: Twitter, Facebook, RSS feds and blogging.  I learned a lot about the pull that social media has in my life.  The first week of fasting I was amazed at how my thoughts are wired around tweeting and my facebook statuses.  I figured out that there's a pretty narcissistic side of me.  I read this article on Relevant magazine article entitled "Is Facebook Killing our Souls" by Shane Hipps and put into words what I'd figured out on my fast:

[Facebook] encourages not just self-absorption, but, more accurately, self-consumption. We become creators and consumers of our own brand. We become enamored by a particular kind of self, a pseudo-self. A self-image controlled in much the same way corporate brands are controlled. Complete with pictures, videos, songs and, most of all, metrics—the number of friends we have, the kinds of friends we have and the kind of associations we have. We endlessly refine, create and consume a digital projection we want others to see. However, we are rarely what we project. This image approximates reality, but it is not reality.