Unexpected Benefits of Facebook

Through the years, I’d been involved in a few social networking sites. Among them was Yahoo Groups which was great while the group I was with was active. Soon, the activity level dropped, and it was just a matter of time before I lost interest. I’d tried classmates.com for a short time – but it just wasn’t worth the money as no one else was paying for it, nor were they very active. Myspace.com just seemed to be a total waste of time to me. I joined Facebook because my Mom needed some help uploading pictures to her Facebook page, and I saw that it seemed like a great way for me to look at the pictures she posted. In turn, I thought I could post some pictures of my own. It wasn’t until shortly after I joined that I started connecting with old classmates and friends that I really began to see the benefits of this site.

It was especially my classmates that I wouldn’t necessarily call “friends” – I think “acquaintances” would be a better descriptor, that truly made me realize the benefits of this social networking site. It made me realize how negative our self image can be when no one else is feeling the same way about us.

I thought I was considered to be a bully in elementary school. It wasn’t until I put my feelers out with an acquaintance on Facebook that I found out that I was actually perceived as “one of the nicer guys in the class.” At least I was by this particular individual. This was not only a shock to me, but it actually helped me to boost the confidence of the me I was when I was a boy – if that makes sense. You have this image of yourself as one thing, and others start to tell you they saw you a bit differently, and it tends to change how you saw yourself in the past. I have this new theory that if you can boost the confidence of the child you once were, you can boost the confidence of the person you are now.

It is said that you can’t change the past, but you can change your image of your past. The only thing you have control of is how you feel in this moment. If hearing that you were viewed more positively than you once thought you were helps to change how you feel about yourself now, that has to be a good thing.

Since I was having such a positive response from those that I reconnected with, I started reconnecting with more acquaintances. Mind you, I am still wary of connecting with those that truly rubbed me the wrong way in the past. I have done, and still am doing, forgiveness work with people like that a bit differently. You don’t have to forgive those who have harmed you directly through Facebook – unless they ask you to, of course. However, it doesn’t hurt to ask for forgiveness from those you feel you have harmed. Even if you do not receive a response.

That said, don’t assume that others see you a certain way just because you see yourself that way. We all tend to be hardest on ourselves. We can be very hard on our old selves, also, if we have made an effort to improve spiritually since then. I know I wish some of my old friends and acquaintances knew me as I am now rather than as I once was. Or at least how I thought I once was.

I can’t guarantee that anyone else will experience the same results I did. All I know is that someone who thought he was perceived to be a bully by others turned out not to be perceived as such by most.

I have also reconnected with family and friends. It has been nice to see what family and friends are doing on a daily basis that I wouldn’t otherwise know if we weren’t on Facebook.

I never expected to find these kinds of benefits from a social networking site. If you can get past the annoying updates of how everyone is doing in their games, it is really quite fun!

Namaste