Social Media Fast: Giving Up Facebook for Lent

The first Ash Wednesday I remember was in 1977. I spent the month leading up to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, living a half block off the St. Charles streetcar line in a 1920s efficiency apartment with a Murphy bed.

I partied a lot, walked the city, made a mask out of a plastic half-gallon milk jug, glue and glitter. I went to neighborhood parades where little kids sat on their dads’ shoulders and shouted, “Throw me something, mister!” Most of the beads were still glass in those days, so if you failed to catch them, they shattered when they hit the ground, a ruined trophy. By the time Fat Tuesday rolled around, I couldn’t wait for the tourists to go back where they belonged. At midnight, when it all ended, the streets and the medians and the sidewalks were strewn with broken beads and beer cans and plastic cups reeking of Hurricanes.

On Wednesday morning, I rode the streetcar into town. Cleaning crews had come through while the rest of us were sleeping it off and left the city as unblemished as if it had been to confession, said its Hail Marys and been rendered holy, or at least forgiven. The people who lived and worked in the Crescent City rode the streetcars in subdued silence, foreheads smudged with ash. I thought it was weird.

By Thursday, the hush that had ushered in the Lenten season was over. Party, repent, life as usual.

When I thought of giving up something for Lent this year, I first thought of sugar, which proved too difficult to pull off last year. One day into Lent, I ate three mediocre boxed cookies and never got back on the wagon.

So the idea was born: I would give up Facebook for Lent. The time I typically spend posting my status and liking somebody else’s status, I will invest in my spiritual practice and hope that something worthwhile is born during my time of fasting from friends-on-demand.

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