READING TEXT: Fleeing Facebook Carmen Joy King 1 In March, atthe peak of Facebook popularity, I quit. With four swift clicks ofthe mouse, I canceled my account. Gone was the entire onlinepersona I had created for myself – profile pictures, interests andactivities, work history, friends acquired – all carefully thoughtout to showcase to the world the very best version of me, all nowdeleted. 2 Ironically, the decision to destroy my carefullybuilt-up virtual image came as a result of wanting to enhance myprofile. All that particular week I’d been hungry for new quotes onmy page, something to reflect the week I’d been having: somethingintrospective. I perused a quotes website and found this oneattributed to Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do.” 3 I becamedespondent. What, then, was I? If my time was spent changing myprofile picture on Facebook, thinking of a clever status update forFacebook, checking my profile again to see if anyone had commentedon my page, Is this what I am? A person who re-visits her ownthoughts and images for hours each day? And so what do I amount to?An egotist? A voyeur? Whatever the label, I was unhappy and feelingempty. The amount of time I spent on Facebook had pushed me into anexistential crisis. It wasn’t the time-wasting, per se, thatbothered me. It was the nature of the obsession – namelyself-obsession. Enough was enough. I left Facebook. 4 In the past,my feelings toward Facebook and similar social networking sites hadswung between a genuine sense of connection and community to theuncomfortable awareness that what all of our blogs, online journalsand personal profiles really amounted to was serious narcissism. Asmy feelings of over-exposure continued to mount, the obvioussolution would have been to set limits on my Facebook time – yet Istill found myself sucked in for longer periods every time Ivisited. In part, it was the hundreds of little links to and hintsabout other people’s lives that kept me coming back. But even moreaddicting were the never-ending possibilities to introduce, enhanceand reveal more of myself. 5 The baby-boomers were at one timethought to be the most self-absorbed generation in American historyand carried the label of the Me Generation. In recent years thistitle has been appropriated, twisted and reassigned to the babiesof those same boomers – born in the 80s and 90s – now calledGeneration Me or the Look at Me Generation. Author Jean Twenge, anAssociate Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University andherself a member of Generation Me – spent ten years doing researchon this group’s sense of entitlement and self-absorption. Sheattributed it to the radical individualism that was engendered bybaby-boomer parents and educators focused on instilling self-esteem in children beginning in the 1970s. American and Canadianyouth were raised on aphorisms such as “express yourself” and “justbe yourself.” To further illustrate her point, Twenge also found alarge increase in self-reference words like “I,” “me,” “mine” and“myself” in news stories published in the 80s and 90s. These wordsreplaced collective words such as “we,” “us,” “humanity,” “country”or “crowd” found in the stories of a similar nature in the 50s and60s. This generation might be the least thoughtful,community-oriented and conscientious one in North American history.6 In the end, what does all this online, arms-length self-promotionultimately provide? Perhaps it’s merely one component of thepursuit to alleviate some of the blackness encountered in theexistential vacuum of modern life. As Schopenhauer once projected,modern humans may be doomed to eternally vacillate between distressand boredom. For the vast majority of people experiencing thefragmented, fast-paced modern world of 2008, a Sunday pause at theend of a hectic week may cause them to become all too aware of thelack of content in their lives. So we update our online profilesand tell ourselves that we are reaching out. 7 And yet, the time wewaste on Facebook only makes our search for comfort and communitymore elusive. Online networking sites are marketed as facilitatorsof community-orientation but when I think about the millions ofpeople – myself included – who spend large portions of their wakinglives feeding off an exchange of thousands of computerized,fragmented images, it doesn’t add up to community-engagement. Theseimages have no meaning beyond “I look pretty from this angle” or“I’m wasted” or “look who my new boyfriend is.” And as we continueto chase even harder – accessing Facebook at work, uploading imagesfrom our cell phones – we spend our money on constantly upgradedelectronic gadgets marketed to our tendency to self-obsess andpresent particularly uninteresting and repetitive images ofourselves. There’s got to be more than this. 8 And so I quit… 9After I left Facebook, I wondered what all my friends, family andacquaintances were going to think when they noticed I’d disappearedoff the Facebook earth. So some of my Facebook narcissism – am Ibeing noticed, am I being missed – remains. But I’m also askingmyself some new questions. How do I find balance between my onlinelife and my “real” life? How much exposure is healthy? How do I actresponsibly for myself and engage with those I love? These arestill “me” thoughts but they feel different than before. As I sithere, keyboard under palm, eyes on screen, I try to remind myselfthat my hands and eyes need to venture out into the community andlook and touch the truly tangible that lies just beyond that otherbig screen: my window.

II. READING COMPREHENSION: Choose the best answer for eachquestion by copying and pasting your chosen answer or typing thecorresponding letter of the answer in the space after testquestions for sections 2 & 3.

1. King deleted her Facebook profile __________ A) to focus moreon her work B) to follow what her friends were doing C) to take herfriend’s advice D) for none of the above reasons

2. King was upset with the way she had been using Facebookbecause __________ A) it was a waste of time B) it had made her tooabsorbed with herself C) it had affected her social life D) it hadhad a negative effect on her health

3. King quotes Aristotle in the article because __________ A)his quote motivated her B) she was unhappy with how she had beenusing social media C) she found his quote reflected herself-reflection D) his quote was popular on many social media

4. The endless opportunities that Facebook offer forself-introduction and self-exploration made King feel __________ A)addicted B) excited C) exhausted D) more stressful

5. Baby-boomers are mentioned in the article because __________A) they were the first generation to use the “collective words”mentioned in this article B) they were regarded as the mostcommunity-oriented generation in history C) they started the trendof the online “self-promotion” D) they were considered as part ofthe reason for their children’s self-absorption

III. SHORT ESSAY WRITING: Choose TWO of therhetorical/organizational modes and explain the effectiveness thesetwo strategies have in conveying King’s main argument (in at leastTWO extended paragraphs) in the space below. Paraphrase or quotedetails/examples to support your ideas and identify the paragraphnumbers. Pay attention to language control and punctuation. Question 1 options: