Viewpoint: Me vs. Facebook

I’m going to be brutally honest and say that -- sometimes -- I really don’t like my generation. Technology completely takes over the majority of people’s lives to such an extent that it’s gradually becoming increasingly unhealthy.

While being so technologically involved is convenient, it’s reached the point of 'over convenience.'

We’re too connected.

The main culprit: Facebook, the untamable beast.

While I will agree that Facebook is a great tool for networking, reconnecting, yadda, yadda, yadda -- it’s not used for what it was once intended to, which was simply to connect people.

Facebook is the largest, most life-consuming social networking site to date, with over 900 million users in more countries than you could rack your brains for.

Until recently, I saw little to no good in Facebook. People spend too much time checking up on what other people are doing that they are neglecting to go out and do something themselves. Sure, one can connect with old friends or family and plan events, but it’s not generally used solely as a helpful tool.

It wasn’t until after I connected with Colin Henry, a senior at the College of Marin, that I saw while Facebook can connect those thousands of miles apart, it can likewise bring the masses together to remember a person who is never returning home.

Colin Henry met Brittney Weaver when he was a sophomore in high school. After hanging around the same group of people for some time, their friendship soon budded to best friend status.

When senior year and graduation rolled around, Henry went off to college, while Weaver pursued her love of horses by staying home to help tend her mother’s horse farm. Weaver even owned a few horses herself. Eventually, Weaver had planned to go on to nursing school.

It was around fall of his first year in college that everything changed for the both of them.

“She was a brutally honest person,” said Henry. “She just came out and said what she needed to say.”

“I’ve got something bad I need to talk to you about,” she had told him. “There’s a very good chance that I’ve got bone cancer.”

As Henry remembers, it didn’t seem to faze Weaver. “There was no fear in her voice. There was no uncertainty,” he said. “She kind of saw it as an inconvenience.”

Though doctors caught the often-fatal disease early, Weaver’s body could not pull through. Like many others in her position, her immune system became weak during her cancer treatment. She ultimately died of infection while in the hospital.

Weaver passed away in October of 2011. She had just turned 20.

With the passing of one of his best friends, Facebook helped guide Henry to some sort of comfort and closure, eventually.

“The hard part about Facebook is that it’s so interconnected in how we connect as a society,” he said. “For the first two or three months, it was very, very difficult…Seeing her name pop up every single day somewhere on Facebook…that constant sort of reminder that she’s gone -- it was very difficult to deal with.”

However, on the flip side, it helped Henry and his peers remember their friend in “a memorial sort of way.”

“A tombstone or an urn can't really capture [a person]. What Facebook does is it tells a story, and when you’re looking back at silly, stupid conversations that you have on Facebook and all the wall posts and photos that you two have been tagged in…you can see the things you’ve been through over time,” he said.

For Henry, each day gets a little easier. Enough time has passed where he can “look back on it and smile and be grateful for what [he] had.”

As far as he knows, there was never even a thought to take down Weaver’s page. Even at her memorial service, Henry and some of his peers stood up and read countless Facebook posts that had been posted to Weaver’s wall.

I’m sure there are similar stories out there like Henry and Weaver’s proving that Facebook is working -- it’s helping today’s young people adapt to the curveballs life throws at us with the only modern way we know how.

So, I guess there is ‘some good in all evil.’ After hearing this story of friendship, unity and community, bearing the countless mobile uploads and nonsensical status updates that constantly flood my newsfeed suddenly seem worth it; knowing that this Internet demon brought happiness to those pained with suffering and loss, well -- it’ll keep me logging in for one more day.

Allie Caren is a Summer 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.

This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.