“Man cannot live by bread alone”, the Biblical teaching that the richness of life cannot be found in our base instincts but in following an existence beyond ourselves, really couldn’t be more apt today. Let me explain why.
Is Facebook Better Than Sliced Bread?
Facebook is pretty awesome. Anything that improves the lives of hundreds of millions of people, no matter how superficial or economically insignificant that improvement may be, has to be a good thing.
Sliced bread, or ‘loafed’ bread, is big business. In the UK we consume roughly 3 billion loaves of bread every year – that’s around 12 million loaves every single day. It’s a versatile substance and can be frozen, toasted, or even turned into a desert food.
I know, so what?
Well, quite recently, our consumption of Facebook actually out-stripped our consumption of bread. Still in the UK, Facebook receives visits from 12.5 million unique users every day. The average sandwich will be eaten in around 10mins; the average user will ‘consume’ Facebook for around 25mins – per visit. More people are interested in Facebook than are interested in bread.
Of course, it’s not a passion for brand ‘Facebook’ that keeps people coming back, and keeps the Facebook juggernaut going (just as most people don’t just eat bread by itself). It’s a more universal interest in the world around us as defined by people we know, trust, or care about, even if we only care a tiny little bit because we only met them once and accepted their friend invite because we didn’t want to be rude.
So I guess in a way, Facebook is doing Jesus’ work – as Zuckerberg says on his own Facebook profile, he’s just “trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share”. Facebook reminds us all that there are more important things in life than satisfying our most base desires. Zuckerberg doesn’t go into any detail as to why it’s socially responsible, philosophically vital, or in any way beneficial, to “connect and share”, which would ordinarily really frustrate me, but in this instance he doesn’t need to: it goes without saying.
A world with no sharing, no showing and no connecting, is a dystopic world indeed. While we can live without bread, as vegetarians live without Sunday roasts and Christmas turkey, our species cannot continue to progress without these components of construction.
So there you go, Facebook really is better for us than sliced bread.
Bread image by Billings Photography on flickr
