photo: kiwanja/ BY-NC-SA

I always tell my friends that they can know how happy I am based on how much I use Facebook. The less I'm on the supposedly-social site, the more of a social life I actually have.

Back when I was in high school, I was actually a guest on a local radio show talking about Facebook. I was the one teenager they could find that was brave and/or lame enough to refuse signing up for a profile.

Eventually, I gave up my unique conversation starter ('"You don't have Facebook? Did something happen to you as a child?") in exchange for a sip of the Kool-Aid.

Like most addicts, I started on the premise of using the drug in moderation; I would only use the opium of my generation's masses to keep in touch with real friends.

Since then, Facebook moderation has gone by the wayside along with texting—the other technology I once swore never to use. Now the only tech-fad I reject is Twitter, but if my normal pattern follows, you should be able to follow me on it in around a year.

When I went off to study in Cuba last semester, I took it as a welcome opportunity to reunite with my inner Luddite. Because internet access was so expensive and slow, I only used a computer once every two or so weeks, and only then to tell friends and family I was alive. My cell phone remained in a drawer, useless and untouched for three months.

After about a month living tech-free in Havana, I woke up sweaty—(from fear or excitement I’m not sure)--from a dream where I had been text messaging. I sat dazed, trying to remember what the whole texting thing was all about. After only a month, the concept seemed more foreign than the Spanish language.

Why had it been exciting to get two lines of text sent to my phone just a month before? What did my phone's screen even look like? Why wouldn't I just call people? God, we were all so silly in the States.

It didn't matter that cell phones were newly legal in the country and had even made their way to some corrupted local friends. The important thing was I could go entire weeks without hearing an annoying ringtone. Finally, I could lie in a field of grass all day and hear nothing but the sweet sound of animals waiting to eat me in the bushes.

Best of all, I found myself having a life. I had to make plans with people in advance--and they couldn't just cancel on me by texting me at the last minute. I couldn't waste hours looking at other people's lives on Facebook or searching for summer jobs on Craigslist. Like most people on vacation, I was in Cuba to experience the present, and there was little point to thinking about the future.

Now that I'm back, technology and I have had somewhat of a relapse. Like getting involved with an ex-boyfriend just because he's available, it feels good because I know it's bad.

Missing the beaches of Cuba, I content myself with internet self-abuse.

I look at the adventures other people are having and reminisce about how I was once like them. I check out jobs I know I don't want (like being an egg donor or nude art model) on Craigslist. The sites are a comforting form of masochism; they help remind me of all the cool or at least conversation-worthy things I could be doing. Checking the sites allows me to pretend I'm trying to get out of my post-Cuba rut, while simultaneously making me feel pathetic enough not to actually try.

Thanks to the internet, you can always find a study that confirms your suspected mental illness. I Googled 'Facebook Depression', and came up with a study by Stony Brook University done a few years ago on 13-year-old girls. The study basically found that the more the girls used Facebook, the more prone to depression they became. I knew it! Sure, I'm not 13 and dealing with braces and cyber-bullying, but still, this sounded like me!

Next, I Googled cell phone depression and found a study on South Korean teens that found that those who used their phones 90 or more times a day did so because they are unhappy and bored.

And so, the internet has confirmed my suspicion of well...the internet. I sit here listening to Pandora Radio, which somehow manages to figure out all the music I like based on a list of my ten favorite artists. It uses modern technology, makes me feel un-original, and works like a dream. In a minute, I'll email a friend in Cuba, who can only communicate with me by using the internet (still illegal in his country) a few times a week. And so it goes.

The one place I was able to escape modern life can now only be remembered through the very technology I was avoiding. And someday, when the embargo is finally lifted and Cuba has less oppressive leaders, they too will become texting-Facebooking addicts.

Hopefully by then, I’ll have figured out a way to connect by finally signing off.