This happens every time I have a paper due or right before a massive test. The television is on, playing a movie that I must have seen at least six times, and my finger is intently hitting the right arrow key on my laptop. What am I doing? The common pasttime of college students everywhere: Facebook Stalking.

It doesn’t matter who it is—if it’s on your news feed, you’re going through every picture. Suddenly, you’re checking the profile pictures of someone you don’t even know, and by the next minute, you have found this strange guy’s girlfriend.

This behavior is simply unacceptable. Not only does it prolong the time until you actually start getting to the work that is due tomorrow, but let’s face it, it’s creepy.

Even as I write this, I have Facebook open on a tab and am constantly clicking that dreaded “News Feed” link to remain updated.

What is so important that I need to know? Will not knowing about every second of someone’s life really be that bad? Is Facebook the worst thing that ever happened to productivity? Maybe. But maybe not. Perhaps it all has to do with control.

Out of my 540 Facebook friends, I speak to about 20 of them. What about the 520 others? Is there really a purpose to know about people I haven’t spoken with since middle school? And isn’t it a little weird that these “friends” also see everything I post? So, here’s the plan: by the summer, I plan on going through my friend list and deleting the people I have only met once and do not have any intentions of ever seeing again. I understand that this sounds harsh, and it is not as if I have upwards of 1,000 friends, but as I travel and continue school, I will only continue to meet new people, and I would much rather stay connected with people I care about and vice versa.

Recently, I have learned to let go of the past, a lesson a lot of us could use. Unfortunately, Facebook does nothing to help us move on or forget. Unless you put the nifty blocking options to use or if you have unbelievable self-control, social networking sites will get you straight to that certain profile you have been meaning to avoid or their status updates and conversations will spam your home page.

I am not planning on avoiding the past by simply deleting friends— that would be a weak and pathetic decision. Instead, at least for now, I have decided on giving up on my addiction of incessant stalking. New pictures from Europe from someone I went to high school with? Those will definitely be inspected. Pictures from a party with someone whose real last name I don’t even know? Not so much.

I am hoping through some form of Facebook avoidance and friend deletion, I will cleanse myself from wasting time online. In the next five years, no one will remember the time I spent checking blogs, memorable tweets or forming witty Facebook statuses. The only thing that will matter is what I accomplished. I understand that there are people whose jobs are to maintain social networking presence for companies, but I am not getting paid to research the lives of strangers.

Sure, Facebook comes in handy when you have to quickly find out the name of a friend’s friend you met that one time last year at a party, but other than that, it gives you complete permission to become an unofficial private detective, or in short, a creeper.

So, instead of searching through every tagged picture of a friend I used to know, I will make a conscious effort to reduce my Facebook time. I know it is far-fetched, considering Facebook is so easily accessible, and I sometimes find myself on the site without even realizing it, but it is something I will need to take baby steps towards.

The reason an hour-long homework assignment turns into a four-hour ordeal is because of procrastination powers. It certainly will not come easy, but I can at least allot myself limited amount of time a day on Facebook, perhaps leaving me with extra time to enjoy the warmer days ahead with actual people instead of just their profile pages. 

To contact The Ionian’s Ranisha Singh, e-mail her at  [email protected].