I got on Facebook and My Space to keep tabs on my young teenagers. I was certain these were tools created by stalkers and pedophiles to ensnare children just like mine. 
My Space faded into the unused social profile pile, but Facebook became a major part of my life. On my best days, I’m one of those Facebook friends who drive you crazy by posting twice within minutes of one another. Once I had a smart phone with the Facebook app, I was unstoppable. When I couldn’t sleep at night, which is often, I would check Facebook and make a post to let all of my friends know that I was still suffering from insomnia. These were usually links to news stories that I would never have had time to read during the day, so I felt that at least my insomniac hours weren’t wasted.
I heard a news story that Facebook is causing depression among Americans, who worry about not having as many friends as their friends or not having posts that are as exciting. Most of my Facebook “friends” are no longer people. My family members post regularly, but mostly Facebook lets me keep up with the news outlets I’ve chosen and alerts me to sales at my favorite stores. My children, who began all of this craziness, never post and they have hundreds of friends. 
Confessional: It does drive me crazy that my husband’s ex-wife, whom I find to be such a disagreeable person, has more friends than I do:(
When I began using Facebook as a therapy session, I gave myself an intervention and started a blog! Here I became numbers obsessed. I didn’t expect anyone to ever view my blog, but once someone had, I was intrigued and began tracking my stats. I was so excited when real searches were leading people to my blog about my kids’ mom’s husband and his stomach ulcer, until I realized that they were probably hits generated by the picture of a stomach ulcer. Same for my post about the Habitrail. My husband laughed when I saw hits for my post about the best sex playlist. “Sex sells,” was basically his comment.
So now, thanks to WordPress, I’m on Twitter and I just received notice that I have a follower! Who this person is, why they chose to follow, is irrelevant. One follower might be followed by others and now I have more stats to track!
A friend just invited me to join Dropbox. It’s downloading as we speak. I just hope it doesn’t have a stats feature. All of this social media helping me manage my social networks and channel my inner addict are starting to make me wonder if I have a problem. 
Maybe I’ll start a Facebook page for people like me. And your first post should be, “Hello, my name is x and I’m addicted to social media.” Maybe those addicts will become your Facebook friends, read your blog, follow you on Twitter, and view your shared Dropbox items. Hey, an addict can dream.
