Don’t even ask us how much time we spend on Facebook.
It’s a common occurrence: You open up your laptop fully expecting that tonight you’re going to get a hell-of-a-lot of work done (because you need to get a hell-of-a-lot of work done). Everything seems set: you’re in a quiet place, you’re playing Eye of the Tiger in the background and you’ve made a study schedule that would put Hermione to shame. But then as you finally open your laptop, your mouse cursor inevitably trails over to Facebook. Before you know it, you’re left crying for hours with a carton of ice cream by your side and a chain of bad memories. How long has it been like this? you ask yourself.
Ten years.
In honor of Facebook’s 10th birthday, Time magazine has created a tool to calculate just how much of your life has fallen into this massive time sink. The results will shock you with numbers so high you might not believe that Facebook’s had time to do anything other than take up yours. But alas, it has. Let’s take a look at what the tech giant’s accomplished in the past 10 years:
Racking up more than a billion users
Facebook officially leapt past this milestone in 2012, and we doubt it will slow down any time soon. Seriously, that’s enough users to fill many, many small countries. At least you aren’t wasting away your time alone.
Having its stock tank on Wall Street
Facebook suffered a very publicized crash in its stock price after the company entered the stock market, leading many to believe Facebook itself was “just a fad.” Joke’s on the critics though: The company is doing well now, and Facebook is still around in 2014. Lesson learned: Never bet against Mark Zuckerberg. Ever. He has, and always will have, enough money to buy you — along with everything you love.
Running into a bunch of privacy controversy
People always seem concerned with how much their Facebook profile page gives away about them, whether it be a physical location or unsavory personal details. Ever had a parent or co-worker comment on that photo that was tagged of you last night? But in light of the recent NSA scandal, this sort of pales in comparison.
Killing the Wall and creating the “Timeline”
People made a huge stink when Facebook introduced the Timeline along with “Cover Photos” in 2012, acting like the new layout had just kicked a kitten or something. Ironically, most people probably like it now and will invariably complain when it changes again.
Preventing us from doing any of the following:
Studying for that midterm we failed:
Even if most of those 30-ish days we at the Clog each racked up weren’t in college, having even one full extra day to study probably would have changed things. Maybe you would have impressed the teacher with a better grade and have been offered a research position. Or at least passed the class. Oh well. We have only ourselves to blame.
Learning a musical instrument:
Thirty days is a pretty nice amount of time for you to start learning the instrument you’ve always wanted to play. Maybe we’d all be concert violinists by now. But hey, the keyboard counts as an instrument too … right? (The computer keyboard, that is.)
Finding true love:
Thirty days is a lot of time to go out there and meet new people. Who knows — maybe during one of those 30 days you were on Facebook, your true love walked straight by you. It’s a shame most of us were on our computers while it happened. Wow, that’s depressing.
Realizing the meaning of life:
Thirty days of deep meditation would certainly have brought an individual closer to an enlightened state of mind that encourages harmony between human beings. Maybe somewhere along the way we could have discovered the true meaning of life. Instead, we spent that time watching Vines of kittens. In our defense, they were adorable.
Killing MySpace
… On second thought, maybe Facebook isn’t so bad.