Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Yellow carnations symbolize disappointment, disdain, and rejection

Earlier this evening it struck me that Facebook is helping to make the world a crueler place. Facebook enables us to unfriend friends without their knowledge. They disappear from our public feed stream. As far as we are concerned, they do not exist.

We may have a good reason for unfriending them. We friended them because they were friends of friends, only to discover that we had few common interests.

On the other hand, we may unfriend them as a way of denying their existence, of refusing to recognize that they are human beings like ourselves and have feelings. We do not want to know what they feel. Indeed, we may not care what they feel. In our mind, they are discardable, something of no value to us, and so we discard them.

For this reason, I believe that Facebook is helping the world to become a crueler place. When we devalue people, it is likely to lead us to treating them with less respect and less kindness. 

Facebook is making it easier for us to devalue people. We can disappear from our lives without having to deal with how they may react to our disappearance—the pain and hurt we may cause. We can also disappear without them knowing. That does not spare their feelings. If we are important to them, sooner or later they will discover that we are gone.

And rejection hurts. It affects the same area of the brain as a physical injury. It can lead to anxiety and depression and even physical illness. It can shorten someone's life.

For Christians, I believe that this should concern us. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love our enemies, to do good to them, to treat other people as we would be treated, and to love each other. Jesus does not teach us to act the way the world acts. It may be a struggle for us to follow his teaching. But Jesus taught us to live a life of love, to treat everyone with respect and kindness.