There’s been a running discussion about Facebook on one of the author’s lists where I’m a member. First of all, the new Facebook place app had everyone (including me) annoyed and getting instructions for turning it off. Then the discussion took a sharp turn, as these things are wont to do. One author had received a comment from a stranger who said she was a “cutie.” She took umbrage. After all, her photo only showed her eyes peeking out from behind a book. How could the guy call her a cutie? Wasn’t it vaguely creepy? Did it mean she was facing a potential stalker?

After that the messages came hot and heavy, mainly from authors explaining why they weren’t and would never be on Facebook or MySpace or that Twitter thing (whatever it was). According to many of these authors, this social media stuff took too much time. If you got involved, you spent all your time posting instead of doing what you should be doing: writing. Better not to post at all than to waste time you could be devoting to your craft.

Dangerous, all of that stuff. Rife with mental cases, all looking for potential victims. Liable to cut into your writing time so thoroughly that you’d never finish that 200,000-word historical you’ve been working on for years.

Be afraid; be very, very afraid.

I must admit that, as usual, I kept my mouth shut, largely because I couldn’t think of any way to staunch this flow of near-hysteria. I’m on Facebook, of course. Also Twitter, MySpace and Goodreads. As of now, I’ve received no inappropriate messages, and I find they’re a helpful way to connect with readers and with people I know personally. But then again, I’m also a ebook author, which most of the people who were having hissy fits were not. Which means, of course, that I use digital media a lot (and it hasn’t bitten me yet). I know there are cyber stalkers out there, but I haven’t ever encountered one on Facebook or Twitter. I’m pretty careful about who I friend, and I don’t automatically follow everybody who follows me.

As for the time issue, I’ve known people who were addicted to Twitter and spent an awful lot of time out there. I’ve known people, similarly, who spent hours on Facebook. Needless to say. I’m not one of them. I post two or three times a day and do a quick check to see what my friends have to say. Then I do, in fact, go back to writing.

But the people who never post at all are somehow certain that all of this is threatening. If they once give in and start using Twitter, they’ll be sucked into some kind of infinite time sink that will keep them from ever finishing anything. And should they post anything on Facebook, Hannibal Lecter will show up on their doorstep tomorrow.

I think there’s a certain retrograde flavor to all of this. A lot of print authors would very much like the publishing industry to return to what it was in, say, the nineties. Or, better yet, the eighties. At any rate, they long for a time when publicists took care of all this, and when communications from readers arrived in envelopes with stamps.

And I can sympathize with that idea up to a point. The problem is, of course, that it’s not going to happen. Some writers can afford to ignore all this Internet stuff. Linda Howard, for example, still doesn’t have a Web site of her own separate from her publisher’s site, and I haven’t seen Nora Roberts posting on Twitter lately (although, Lord knows, a lot of people post about her). But most of us have to work harder than that.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace et al. aren’t evil. They’re not salvation either. They’re just another way to reach people. If you prefer not to use them, more power to you. It’s your choice. But please don’t try to justify that choice by implying that they represent some kind of Sinister Plot to undermine the time and integrity of romance writers. Take a deep breath, pour yourself a glass of something, and get back to work.