The ultimate sacrifice: Facebook-free for Lent

Forget swearing off junk food or alcohol; some people in their 20s are giving up social networking sites like Facebook for Lent. 

They call the site a bad habit and are resisting logging on, which is a challenge in a need-to-know and wireless-obsessed society.

"Since the entire world has gone wireless, it seems much smaller. It's easy to connect to anyone, anywhere," said Ashley Cullins, 23, of Chicago, who gave up Facebook and MySpace. "It diminishes the importance of communication, because it is so convenient it seems almost trivial."

Facebook debuted in 2004 as a social networking site for college students but is now available to anyone. It is the sixth most trafficked site in the United States and boasts 63 million active users.

Many groups like "40 Days and 40 Nights Without Facebook" and "I'm Giving Up Facebook For Lent" have cropped up on the site.

Christen Sanders, 21, a student at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, and Cullins are simply ignoring the messages and not logging on, but Erica Islas, 24, an environmental engineer in Chicago, has a more clever approach to avoiding indulgence.

"I open up Firefox and type in "f-a-c-e..." into the address bar of the browser without even thinking," said the Northwestern University alumna who gave up Facebook and MySpace. "So to curtail that, I rigged both my work and home computers so that even if I type in Facebook or MySpace, I get a 'The page cannot be displayed' prompt."

Facebook is very appealing because of the convenience of keeping in touch.

"We've all become so pressed for time that it's easier to click on a profile than to make a phone call or a dinner date to catch up," Islas said.  "But no one should mislead himself; these sites are not a replacement for actual human interaction."

Sanders agreed and said sites like Facebook make it easy to get to know a person without having to sit down and talk.

Most give it up so they can have free time, be more productive and turn a deaf ear to the gossip Facebook publishes on the Newsfeed, which notifies users if one of their friends made changes to her profile. 

Islas used to check her Facebook account four times a day. For the first few days without it, she said she was anxious and felt as if she was missing out on social events. She was soon shocked with amount of free time she had. 

Cullins doesn't miss Facebook and said if anything important happened, she'd find out about it. 

Facebook is "a gossiper's dream come true," said Cullins, who works in Palatine as an events coordinator. "I decided to give it up to be more productive, and to avoid the temptation to constantly gossip."

Islas agreed and said that as a good Catholic, she shouldn't be gossiping anyway.

As for their future habits, Islas and Cullins said they don't think they will be as "addicted" and will use Facebook for the reason they signed up for: to keep in touch with people they don't see often. 

Sanders said she probably won't change. 

"Once the Lent season is over with, I'll probably end up using it just as much as I did before, sadly," she said.