The Happiness Effect

by Donna Freitas

  “I have to be careful, because it’s like, ‘Am I only posting this to be spiritual or to be religious?’ ” he says. “Because if I am, then that’s not right, that’s not fair to God, that’s not being true to Him and it’s also not being true to who I’m being right now … . but I do have to be careful of things like that, you know? Because again, this idea of it being my duty to use Facebook as an evangelical tool as opposed to just using it, it’s natural to me. I don’t ever want to appear as the false spiritual person.”

  Among the students I interviewed, Jose is virtually unique in the authentic way he uses social media. This isn’t to say that he reveals everything about himself, or that he doesn’t polish his image a bit; what sets him apart is that he appears to express genuine feelings online, which is something most young people are afraid to do. As with Jennifer, this appears to be driven by his commitment to God. Also, like Jennifer, posting with God and faith in mind seems to energize Jose rather than demoralize him.

  ALIMA: YOUNG, MUSLIM, AND FEMALE ON FACEBOOK

  Not all students who express their faith on social media do so in the same way as Jose and Jennifer. Some students, like Alima, use social media as a way to subvert the limitations their faith places on them.

  When Alima sweeps into the interview room, she is full of smiles. She has rushed to get here and is worried she’s late (she isn’t). She plops down into the chair across from me and begins arranging herself, getting comfortable so we can begin. Alima wears a black headscarf that reveals a beautiful face and eyes as bright as her smile. Everything about her is beautiful—her eye makeup, which is heavy but tastefully done, her smooth skin. She was born in Calcutta, and her family moved to the United States when she was five. Her dress is conservative—she wears a long, traditional black cloak for Muslim women that reaches all the way to the floor and whose sleeves end at her wrists. She tells me that her father is very strict and “makes her” dress like this for school—which, Alima tells me while rolling her eyes, is totally ironic.

  Alima’s father left his own parents in India because they were too religious for his taste. He came to the United States to pursue his version of the American dream but also to try all the things that his family’s faith had forbidden—drinking, clubbing, partying, sex outside of marriage. He got piercings and wore chains and leather jackets and had aviator shades like those in the film Top Gun, Alima tells me. But now? Today he’s extremely religious, just like the family he left. She doesn’t consider this fair to her at all—she’s the one who has to pay the biggest price for her father’s religious conservatism.

  “Now I feel like I’m being so controlled by my father,” she says. “He wants me to come to college like this”—she gestures at her clothing—“he’s controlling me because he has no one else [to control].” Alima describes her father as “very pushy” when it comes to religion. “No movies, no guy friends, no friends, no social life, it’s haram—haram is forbidden,” she says. “This is haram, that is haram, you can’t listen to music you can’t do this, you can’t do that.” She adds, her tone frustrated and angry, “Shut up please! I have had enough of this.”

  Alima’s mother is another story. She’s the “rebellious type,” Alima says with pride. She recently got her PhD, and although she follows Muslim tradition—she’s a faithful wife and prays five times a day—she’s not strict like Alima’s father. “She’s like, ‘You want to have fun with friends? Go ahead. You want to go to a party? Go ahead. But know your own lines. You can have all the fun you want, but don’t do anything that’s going to upset God. And just don’t be in relationships with boys. Have them as friends, but don’t cross that line of friendship.” Alima’s mother tries to be the peacemaker between Alima and her father, and when Alima complains about how she has to dress for school, her mother tries to console her by saying that it’s not a big deal, that it’s just clothing, that Alima will always be Alima underneath, and if wearing these things is the only way her father will allow her to attend college, then she simply will have to go along with it.

  Alima commutes from home to attend the public university where she is a sophomore. Living at home as opposed to in a residence hall is typical for an unmarried Muslim girl her age, but it also means that Alima’s choices for college were very limited geographically—also her father’s doing. She’s thrilled to be going to college outside of her house at all, though, since for a couple of years she was only allowed to take online courses, which is how she earned her associate degree. Alima attributed this to “trust issues” with both parents that developed during high school, but mostly it was because of her father, of course. “I understood that they were [requiring me to attend college online] for my own safety and, you know, to keep my character and dignity,” Alima says graciously. “In the beginning, I was like, ‘This is so boring, I don’t want to do this because online even if you do interact with people, I feel like facial expressions and eye contact are very important to a conversation, and it took me a while to get used to it, but I got used to it.”

  Alima first set up a Facebook account when she was in high school. Her mother was upset when she found out, but eventually she got over it. Alima’s mother is able to access Alima’s Facebook page—she has the password and sometimes goes online to check what Alima is posting, and to see what the rest of their family is up to. Neither her mother nor her father has a Facebook page of their own.

  During high school, Alima says, Facebook was “drama central.” At one point, another girl at her school made fun of her in a very cruel way—maybe even bullied her a little. “When I was a junior,” she begins, “there was this girl who took a picture of her[self] punching a garbage can that had the beak of a toucan. Right? And she tagged me in it. She tagged me as the [toucan] garbage can because my nose is quite large.” Alima points to her nose, then covers it with her hands, laughing slightly, but seeming embarrassed, too. People apparently made lots of comments about the photo—many of them at Alima’s expense. “I was hurt, I was angry,” she says. “I had self-esteem issues. I didn’t find myself to be very attractive because of my nose. I hated my nose. But you know, on top of that people were making fun of it. Toucan Sam, Fruit Loops—you know because Fruit Loops has a toucan—Pinocchio. I was just like, ‘Oh my god, is my nose really that big? It hurt, it hurt, I was really angry as well, but you know, I look back and I’m like what a waste of time. I feel like it was just a phase, everyone goes through it. But how you handle it shapes who you are.”

  When we turn to the subject of who Alima is online today, she tells me that if I went to her Facebook page, I’d see that her status this morning is about the rain and how much she loves it. She has lots of pictures of her family and also of cars and motorcycles. Then she tells me something interesting about her profile picture—and what it has to do with being a Muslim girl.

  “My profile picture isn’t of me,” she begins, then backtracks. “It is of me, but I’m not showing my face. It’s my hands full of henna.” She goes on to explain that you can see her headscarf, but her hennaed hands are covering her face. Alima has very strict privacy settings with respect to who can see what on her profile, and aside from the family members she’s friends with, most of the people she’s connected to are girls.

  The reason?

  “Because I take pictures of myself without my scarf,” Alima explains. “And the hair is considered beauty in my religion.” Alima loves her hair, and she loves posting pictures of her hair exposed on Facebook. But only girls can see them.

  “When I add a certain friend, I have them grouped by girls and then guys,” she says. “If you’re in the guys’ group, you can’t see my pictures. If you’re in the girls’ group, you can. [Guys will] see my pictures of the cars, motorcycles, but just not my face or hair.” They can also see the profile picture of her hands blocking her face—but that is the only picture of Alima they can see. This is pretty typical Facebook protocol for Muslim girls, Alima thinks. “My Muslim girlfriends, [when] t
hey post, they’re all covered and modest. There aren’t any friends of mine, Muslim friends of mine, who post pictures of themselves, you know, exposed. They always have a scarf on, they’re fully covered. I mean they have makeup, but that’s it. And my Muslim guy friends, a few of them like to show off their abs, but other than that they’re all pretty covered as well.”

  Then Alima wants to talk a bit more about boys.

  Alima loves boys and she loves talking about them. In her religion, she tells me, boyfriends are completely forbidden, but this doesn’t stop her from having major crushes. Facebook is a great place to be in touch with boys, and Alima has struck up a very interesting deal with her mother. Technically, Alima’s faith should forbid her from connecting with boys via social media. But she is allowed to friend boys if her mother approves first. In fact, if Alima finds herself wanting to friend a boy on Facebook, she and her mother sit down and have a chat about it. She’ll literally go to her mother and say, “Ma, you know, I met this guy.” She’ll even tell her mother if she thinks he’s handsome, and then she’ll ask for her mother’s permission to add him as a friend.

  “I do that because I respect her,” she says. “I know I can always add [a guy] and talk to him whenever I want, but I do that because I respect her and also because I value the trust that she has with me. Even though she can go on [because she has my password] and see who I’m adding. But I value my relationship with my mom a lot more than I did back in high school. So I ask her.”

  Does her mother ever say no?

  She usually says yes, Alima tells me, with a laugh.

  Alima finds herself wishing that the handsome boys she’s friends with on Facebook could see those photos of her showing her hair, though. “But I know it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong,” she says. “Not just in the eyes of my mother, but in the eyes of God it’s wrong.” Having boys as Facebook friends is difficult for a young, pretty, unmarried Muslim woman. It’s tempting to flirt and to communicate far more than Alima thinks she should—something she did in high school, she admits. She doesn’t do that anymore, though. “I feel like I’m strong enough to control myself,” she explains. “There’s always the right and the wrong, and you know the consequences of the wrong, and you know the benefit of the right. And I usually take the right decision.” But Alima is not alone in this struggle. Making the right decisions around boys on Facebook is something that all young Muslim women her age face, she thinks.

  Muslim girls even sext sometimes, she tells me. They talk to boys, they send pictures, and the Muslim boys like to watch porn. “I was taught that sex is supposed to be divine, something you do with somebody you sincerely love, not just, you know, a hookup around the corner,” Alima explains. “I’ve learned if it’s a bunch of boys around a phone it’s either basketball or porn.” Social media and smartphones make all of this behavior far too easy, in Alima’s opinion, and she does not approve of it. “God forbid if I have a daughter and I see her doing that kind of stuff,” she tells me. “It would break my heart, it would break my heart.”

  Before our interview ends, I ask Alima if there’s anything that we didn’t yet talk about that she’d like to discuss. It turns out, there’s quite a bit.

  “I’m just really afraid for the young girls, I’m afraid for the next generation,” she says. “I’m afraid that they’re not going to know the struggle of actually going through the encyclopedia, they’re not going to have the communication skills that we need to conduct an interview or have a regular conversation with anyone on the street. I’m afraid that they’re going to go through a lot of cyberbullying.” She pauses a moment, thinking. “But what can we do about it?” she asks, then pauses once more. “You can’t completely ban your child from using Facebook because they will find another way. You know? So, I think I’m going to have a hard time raising my kids in this country. I’m not going to be like my father, but I will definitely protect my sons and daughters from the harm that’s possible because of social media. The drama involved, the amount of time it can possibly waste. The things you see that change your perspective on people. It’s just sad. It’s sad.” Then Alima pauses one last time, and a thoughtful smile lights up her face once more, and she laughs. “But then, social media can cause a revolution, you know?”

  TO FACEBOOK OR NOT TO FACEBOOK

  Orthodox Jews also have strict rules about social media. But while many stay away entirely, others engage in ways that give them freedoms they would not otherwise have. One young Orthodox man I interviewed, a sophomore named Zachary, told me he is incredibly antisocial in real life, but is very active on social media expressly because “it keeps [him] in check with the secular world.” “Which is very important because I go to a secular university, I live in the secular world, I don’t live in a ghetto,” Zachary says. “So I need to remember that no matter how I might look or how I might talk or what I may think, you still have to adjust to your surroundings a little bit.”

  But social media is more than a study in secular living for Zachary. It’s also a sphere where he loves looking at photos of people doing all the things he’s not allowed to do because he’s Orthodox. Luckily for Zachary, his extended family isn’t Orthodox. “What they’re doing doesn’t align with my beliefs,” Zachary explains. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to look at pictures of them doing it. You know, I have cousins that go out once a week to this sushi restaurant, and I could never eat there. But I love looking at the pictures of them all sitting there in this hibachi-style restaurant. [And] if there is a party on Saturday or something, I like looking at pictures of what they’ve done, you know, my other friends that do things that I don’t.”

  “I’m very grateful,” he says, that social media gives him a window into the secular world.

  But then I meet Dinah, a senior at her public university, who is also an Orthodox Jew but has a very different relationship to social media than Zachary. Dinah is very serious about her studies. She has beautiful blonde, wavy hair and bright blue eyes that peer out from behind her glasses. She’s petite, energetic, friendly, and excited to talk about anything and everything. Like Alima, she commutes from home, where she lives with her father (her mother died some time ago) and her many siblings.

  Before we start our interview, however, Dinah worries that she isn’t a “good candidate” for this study. She is an “outlier” with regard to social media. I tell her this doesn’t matter, and I ask her to go into greater detail about what she means. As it turns out, Dinah doesn’t have any social media accounts—she doesn’t even have a smartphone, which is extremely rare among the students I interviewed. Dinah does spend time online, she assures me. She watches YouTube videos of people singing, because of her interest in music. But unlike most of her Orthodox friends, social media is a no-go for her.

  “Pretty much everyone I know, including and especially my Orthodox friends, have Facebook,” Dinah begins. “It’s very simple. If I get Facebook, I will never get offline. I’m premed, I have things I have to do… . If I got it I would never stop. I will get addicted to Facebook, and I’ll never get off, and I’ll spend all my time in the house.” Dinah backtracks a moment to clarify her comment about how her Orthodox friends “especially” are on Facebook. “Most Orthodox people I know at this point have Facebook. The Hasidic people don’t …  . and they have their reasons, which are usually about not running into things you don’t want to see.” She laughs and shakes her head. “It’s funny, because for a community that was so anti-Internet originally, and still is in certain pockets, [Orthodox Jews] have nothing really wrong with the Internet. They have an issue with pornography, and the ease with which you could escape from Judaism, escape from being an Orthodox person, because you see other people and you see how they live.”

  Dinah’s Orthodox friends who are on Facebook struggle with it. Comparing their lives with the lives of those who don’t have such limitations can be extremely difficult. “I have one friend who is incredibly desperate to get out of her parents’
house,” Dinah says. “She hates living with them. She doesn’t hate her siblings, but she doesn’t really get along with them… . And when she sees the posts of the other people who had internships with her on Facebook and she realizes that they’re living in college dorms and not their parents’ house, that they are not as tied as she is, I think she gets very upset about it. For the past four years I have watched her come to hate her circumstances more possibly because she’s seen others. I mean, she’s met these people, she knows that they’re different than her. I think that constantly being reminded isn’t so easy for her.”

  Whereas the way that Facebook showcases the secular lives of Zachary’s family members offers him a much-desired window into what he’s not allowed to experience—a window he values—Dinah’s friend only experiences pain because of what she sees. The phenomenon of comparing oneself to others is particularly acute when a young Orthodox woman is constantly perusing the lives of non-Orthodox friends because the distance between what she’s allowed to do and what they can do is all too evident. The window Facebook offers only makes her circumstances seem more unbearable.

  Then I interview Ephraim, who is also an Orthodox Jew, and he, too, warns me that he is a “bad specimen” for this study. I tell him there is no such thing, and off we go.

  Ephraim grins nearly constantly and cracks lots of jokes. He tells me he looked me up before coming here (one of the only participants who admits this) and knows I’ve written a lot about sex. His eyes twinkle, and he smiles knowingly. Then he asks if we’re going to spend time talking about hooking up.