I’m leaving Facebook. And probably not for the reason you’d expect.

I feel like it gives us all the perceptions that we’re all close, but, in reality, we’re not.

We read up on each others’ posts, so we feel like we know what’s going on in each others’ lives. But we rarely actually talk about anything. It has become a space to show off. We only post things we’re proud of, or things we think are clever. We’re advertising ourselves to our “friends.”

That’s pretty unhealthy on its own. We are the generation of boosting our own egos. Don’t believe me? Listen to today’s popular music.

But even worse, we ignore a large part of each others’ lives, the part that we actually need friends for: our stuggles. I’ve never had a real, deep conversation on Facebook. It just isn’t the tool for that. But because we see such positive updates about each other, we assume everything is fine, and we don’t end up talking about the things we don’t necessarily want everyone to know about.

So I’m leaving. I’m not a difficult person to reach. I email, tweet, blog, speak via telephones (voice and text), and I can even handwrite letters. So, friends: Don’t be strangers.

And maybe I’ll be back. How kind of Facebook it is to give me 14 days to make this decision.