About Facebook

Are there any venture capitalists reading this? I have a great pitch for a new company. It’s called “About FaceBook!” It’s a play on the words of the orders a drill sergeant gives a private who is walking in the wrong direction:

“About face, private!” he yells, to which the soldier promptly does a one eighty.

About FaceBook. It will be a social media site built by these guidelines: 

1. An algorithm will be developed to make sure that for every one good thing in your life you report, you have to disclose something difficult.
   

2. Your news feed must have at least 70% content that goes against your political and social beliefs.
   

3. The only people my social media platform is allowed to recommend as new friends are people of the same sex, within 10 years of your age, and have the same marital status.
   

4. If you want to connect on your own with a member of the opposite sex whose marital status different than yours – you won’t be able to.

Now that’s social media!

Why?

A recent study was released stating that the majority of people who go on social media get stressed out. Their stress levels increase once they use their leisure time, aimed at relaxing, towards checking out the people in their network.

How come?

It’s because people only reveal the good things that are happening in their lives. They filter out the rough stuff that make them appear like everyone else. So when you log on, you see a friend who just spent the evening at a nice steakhouse with her girlfriends, smiling over red wine and medium rare beef. Another friend announces he just got a new promotion, and sports a picture of himself with his new silver-plated watch. A third friend just popped into your feed with pictures of him and his family spending the night building a Lego house they can sleep inside of.

Now, these posts are on the news feed of Person X, who just got off the phone with his best friend who is angry at him for not lending the money he needs to start a business. His boss is upset with him and he doesn’t know if this will hurt his prospects for promotion, or if he will even be allowed back into the office next week. As a result, he is moody. To blow off some steam, he checks out his social media feed only to see everyone else’s perfect existence and come to the conclusion that he is doubly cursed – first with his misfortune, and second with the fact that he now feels Hashem has singled him out to endure it.

When his wife tries to cheer him up, he becomes furious.

Sound familiar?

Social media has taught me one powerful lesson: 

There is no human being on this earth living a perfect life. Everyone has their own difficulties that Hashem sends them to fulfill their purpose by becoming better people. If there is someone living the perfect life – pity them. Either they are not being given a chance to do anything significant with their life, or their purpose here is something you don’t want any part of.

Yet every situation can make its own about face in the blink of an eye.

I couldn’t believe it until I experienced it myself:

Looking for a job, I am reaching out to the 600 companies in Israel located from Herzliya to Hadera. One by one, I am connecting on social media with every CEO, CTO, CMO, and head of HR. Every day I get more and more frustrated.

Why? I am spending all day communicating with people at the top of their field. I’m not in contact with those looking for work, or even unsatisfied with the jobs they already have. The yetzer hara sees the opening and pounds inside my head the following: 

• Why is everybody successful except for you? Do these people observe Shabbat? Do they try to serve Hashem?
• Is G-d really with you? Are the mitzvot worth it?

This is how social media leads to complete heresy. Like everything the yetzer is selling, it is also a total lie.

The moment I shut off the computer, I go outside. I live in a fine building with 20 of the nicest, most honest, decent people in the world. They are beautiful souls whom I love dearly. They are also in the same situation I am in. They live well. Like me, are a couple of months ahead of their bills. Some own their apartment, others rent. We are, financially speaking, part of the 99% of mankind that makes ends meet, lives well, and has really nothing to complain about.

All around me is reality – everyone is in the same situation. On social media, where I am filtering the audience I choose, and that audience is filtering the parts of their life they wish to share, another story is told – and it leads me to outright idolatry.

This is what is so scary about a platform that censures anything “not pretty.” It taunts you with the fake news that you are the only one in the world with problems.

Maybe one day there will be world leaders strong enough to start setting rules and standards for the big social media companies.

Until then it is up to us to get off it. At least, spend 1, 2, 3 days away from it so we can restore a grip on G-d’s reality: If you are valuable in G-d’s eyes, you are always fighting a battle for something great that won’t be shared with others.

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Dovber Halevi runs the website http://www.proudlycandid.com/. On it you can find 1,001 Reasons to Love Israel.