Dear Facebook,

I think it's time that I put an end to our relationship. You may be right for past and present presidents, but you and I are just not meant to be together. You probably won't even miss me. Thanks to you, there are more than 150 million people who are able to keep in touch with friends, to share photographs and videos, and to post regular updates of their thoughts and movements. Why, many members of my own family are proud Facebook fans.

In many ways you are an ideal way for connecting and staying in touch with others. That's why you were first started at Harvard by a student named Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. At that time many prep schools and colleges would issue an annual publication with names and head shots of all students, faculty and staff. This directory, known as a Facebook, was meant to help students get to know each other better. Zuckerberg put you online, first as just a Harvard project; but you quickly spread to other schools and then to the general public.

Make no mistake, I still feel that you are a wonderful way for people to get acquainted or reacquainted with one another, especially if you share a common objective such as a family or class reunion. That is why my wife joined Facebook in the first place. Believe it or not, she is a member of a family that has officially applied to the Guinness World Records, hoping to set the record for the world’s largest tribe! Members of this family are holding a conference in Jerusalem this year during the week of October 11-15. They are all celebrating the 200th anniversary since their ancestor, Hillel Rivlin of Shklov, left his home and family in Russia and made the arduous trek to what was then Palestine in 1809. This inspired other family members to follow leading to an expansion of this clan to more than 50,000 descendents. My wife can trace her lineage directly from [1] Hillel Rivlin to his daughter [2] Gittel (wife of Yakov Bichowsky) to their daughter [3] Aydele wife of Ephraim Yitschak Epstein to their son [4] Schneur Zalman Epstein who had a son [5] Yosef Epstein who had a son [6] Benzion Epstein who had a daughter [7] Yocheved who was my wife's mother.

Needless to say, there is great excitement on the part of my wife, my daughter, and my son about getting together with other members of their illustrious family which includes leaders in every facet of society, including the present Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin. And they have you, Facebook, to thank for introducing them to relatives around the world as well as informing them of the events planned for the conference.

I, too, have a reunion next summer. The 1960 graduating class of Central High School in Madison, Wisconsin will be holding its 50th reunion, and I am looking forward to bathing in the nostalgia of my younger days. I know that a committee of my classmates has been planning this reunion for some time, and I don't doubt that they may even call on you, Facebook, to publicize this event. Does this mean that I'm going to change my mind and have a relationship with you after all? Fagetaboutit!

One reason has to do with my profession. As a psychologist, I have legal and ethical responsibilities to protect the confidentiality of my clients. I am governed by federal rules under the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA as it is called. To do this, I have to keep clear boundaries between my personal life and my professional activities. You make no such distinctions. To you, everyone is a "friend," whether they are client, family member, or coworker. This creates problems and challenges for mental health professionals. Therapists who have a relationship with you need to be mindful that their online activities and relationships will be visible to everyone, including their clients - who do not even have to be connected as a friend in order to view this information. And imagine what happens if a therapist accepts a friend request from a client and later realizes this was not a smart decision? Deleting a client as a friend can be especially rejecting, even more so than declining a friend request in the first place. Yes, I know that it is possible to create a Facebook profile which is mostly hidden, which removes one from searches and keeps friend lists private. But even this doesn't guarantee that others, particularly clients, will not have access to therapists' online profiles, which can have a direct impact on patient care. I, for one, don't mind disclosing some personal thoughts and information both in my sessions as well as on my blog; but that is a far cry from inviting clients into my personal social circle, from revealing who my friends and family members are, and from suggesting to clients who their friends might be!

Some psychologists have studied the impact you have on the way students think and behave, and the results have been disturbing. According to one study, students surveyed had on average lower grades if they used you than students who did not use Facebook. Some scientists are warning that social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, by shortening attention span, encouraging instant gratification, and making young people more self-centered. One study showed that freshman with 200 or more friends on Facebook scored with lower levels of self-esteem and personal and academic adjustment than freshman with less than 200 friends. In other words, the more "friends" you have on Facebook, the less likely you are to have real friends.

Another qualm of mine about social networking sites such as yours is that people often share far too much personal information. Jobs have been lost, court cases have been compromised, identities have been stolen, and cyberstalkers and cyberbullies have had a field day because people post intimate pictures, sensitive secrets or inappropriate confessions on you. If that were not bad enough, some people become addicted to you and spend up to 10 hours per day updating their status, often with banal information that is more than we need to know.

Facebook, you and I inhabit entirely different realms. Your virtual reality offers an unbelievable, ever-expanding superweb of possible interconnections as well as endless opportunities for people to say their piece in unprecedented ways. Yet for all this linking up, there is more apparent disconnecting as well. People spend hours and hours online, and the real world becomes a mere backdrop. Information gushes endlessly, but there is little exchange of genuine value.

How lucky I am that when I was attending college in New York, the way that my mother and father kept in touch with me was through hand written letters from back home in Wisconsin. I have not shared these letters with anyone, not even my brother; but they are among my most cherished personal possessions since they represent intimacy, privacy and permanence, ideas that are becoming alien in the world of Facebook.

You see, I operate in a realm of face-to-face, one-to-one interaction with other flesh-and-blood humans, present to each other as Facebook can never be. Television offered a unique glimpse of this realm when HBO presented a second season of its acclaimed series "In Treatment." I wrote a article last year proclaiming how great I thought this program was in its first season. Well, the second season was even more wonderful. Once again, no artifice, no action—just a drab consulting room with one person talking and one listening. But what intense, gripping interaction! The therapist Paul Weston was once again superbly played by Gabriel Byrne, and this season he had what one critic termed “intellectual tennis matches” with a self-destructive lawyer with whom he had a personal history, a troubled student with an unspeakable life threatening secret, an embattled chief executive seeking help ostensibly with panic attacks, and an overweight teenager with bitterly fighting parents. Paul, too, was dealing with his own traumas and vulnerabilities which he explored, often heatedly, with his own therapist Gina. The result was some of the most quiet, life-changing, frank and meaningful communication ever seen on television.

I guess, my dear Facebook, that our trajectories are incompatible; yours reaches outward, that’s the nature of your existence. In the world of psychotherapy, we are looking inward, striving to help people find what Abraham Lincoln said best: “If I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.”

So farewell and goodbye Facebook, or as you might say, LOL, and : )