Facebook addiction: A Survivor’s Tale Part 7

So last time I was in the middle of telling you how I, a reformed Facebook addict, spent my days on campus. I’d told you, I think, of the rush of blood to the head that came from playing Farmville, especially when beating my 12 hour record, despite the tiredness. Oh wait, I hadn’t yet told you that.

The aim of Farmville, for those who don’t know, is basically to oversee the growth of a community of virtual citizens in your own virtual town, of which you are the mayor. You compete against your Facebook friends for points and for sheer size and power. This game has tonnes of features that really cater to the Facebook addict. It’s compelling, it’s viral, and it keeps you logged onto your Facebook account without having to say a word. In other words, it’s social without really being social, which is what makes it so effective.

So I started playing a trial game, with mayorship of my town of Chivandra, which I thought sounded rather mystical and cool at the same time. I was incompetent at first, but as I continued playing, I got better and better, and more addicted. I once went a whole 14 hours without doing anything other than playing Farmville on Facebook, and that was after a whole week of playing for 12 hours a day. I was a Facebook addict and a Farmville addict all rolled in one.

Addiction can be a cruel and powerful thing. I had my exams amidst a bout of Facebook addiction. Needless to say, they didn’t go well. It’s difficult to concentrate, let alone write an essay, when your vocabulary is full of jumbled up acronyms like ‘lolz’, ‘lmao’ and other gems that professors love to read. I was an inhabitant of the virtual world being forced to adapt and write real world student essays, and that just didn’t seem realistic or fair. I remember stepping out of the exam room feeling really angry, angry that I had been subjected to the nonsensical trivialities of learning the history and politics of places I didn’t know or care about, angry that I had to write something to satisfy the mindless automatons that occupied academia. But somewhere I could not bring myself to recognise, I was angry also at the fact that I had let myself down, let go of the self control that I had exhibited in my university entry exams, and found myself with an uncertain student career.