They’re a little too old to give up potato chips, Guitar Hero or Red Bull for Lent. But as Christian parents ponder an appropriate sacrifice, they find themselves mulling a choice they’d have once seen as preposterous: A Facebook fast — not for their teens but for themselves.
Lenten sacrifices are meant to honor and in a small way reenact the 40 days Jesus is said to have wandered the wilderness, fasting and resisting temptation. Abstaining from Facebook for the 40 days of Lent was the rage among college students last year. This Lenten season — which starts next week on Ash Wednesday — the cause has been taken up by a surprising number of adults. The digital sacrifice won’t be easy, they say, but it may help them reclaim their analog lives.
“If I give up clams, which I hate, I’m not really doing anything,” says Kevin Shine, a 39-year-old electrical contractor from Philadelphia. But abstain from posting “status updates” on his every move? That’s a worthy struggle. “It’s my candy,” he explains, noting that he logs on as much as 20 times a day. “That’s pathological.”
Shine sounds a bit bewildered as he says this, as though he can’t quite believe he’s in this fix. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are far more popular among teens and college students. Nearly half of all 18-to-24 year olds visit such sites at least daily, compared to just 13 percent of Internet users overall, according to the Pew Research Center.
But a significant population of adults has also been hooked. They start by looking up old friends or flames. They scroll through co-workers’ online photo albums. They post random tidbits about their days.
