I’ve been railing against Facebook off and on for several weeks now, and it has nothing to do with privacy concerns. As an IT professional, I am well aware of big data: the harvesting of any and all data from an application’s users which is used to target them with ads tailored to their demographics, location, and interests. After combing through Facebook’s settings and tweaking my interests regarding ads, I actually found most ads to be useful. I found compression socks that I didn’t know I needed and protein bars without soy. I hid ads that weren’t relevant to me, and after a while I didn’t seem to mind them. I still don’t mind them. After all, Facebook was how I found out about the Yellowstone Half Marathon.
To be fair, Facebook does have its merits (notifying me of fun races is one of them). It helps us reach a wide audience when we don’t have time to individually contact friends and family. It helps us stay in contact with friends and family who live far away, and connects people with similar interests in positive ways. For us introverts, it’s a way to meet our social needs without feeling overwhelmed (or leaving the house for us hermits). And for those of us who have very busy lives, we can neglect it for a while, pick it back up later where we left off, and our friends are still there. We can get involved in healthy debates and discussions and gain perspectives. We can join groups, ask for, and give advice. It’s a great tool in moderation.
Where Facebook becomes harmful similar to a negative addiction is when it interferes with daily life and causes stress. This is where I am and it is not where I want to be. At first I thought my lack of time, decrease in productivity, anxiety, and stress were caused by so much email. I unsubscribed from a slew of emails and deleted over 20,000 unread emails from all of my inboxes. Then I thought it might be all the notifications on my phone I obsessively check, so I turned off the Android notification badges and turned off 99% of push notifications. That wasn’t it, either. I was getting annoyed by all of the pointless memes and seeing every friend respond to every pointless meme out there, so I unfollowed those friends and cleaned out my friends list. Then I thought it was all the political memes making me feel like everything is terrible, so I “snoozed for 30 days” all of my Facebook friends who post mostly political memes. That made me feel better for a while, but it still wasn’t enough. I got to the point where I had unfollowed or snoozed every single person who didn’t consistently post original, thoughtful content. Then my Facebook news feed became extremely sparse. What was left was either mostly negativity or the polar opposite. There are actually very few people out there who are authentic and honest enough to post a mix of positive and negative. Everything might be terrible, but surely there are good things as well? And with the people who only post positive things and selfies and check-ins, what the fuck are you hiding? What are you not telling us? We all know that no one’s life is perfect, so what, exactly, are you trying to prove?
I didn’t mean for this post to get so long. What I really wanted to do was an analysis of Facebook content and what it means to me and why I’m so frustrated with it all. So here’s a breakdown of types of Facebook content:
Memes
Humorous memes have their time and place. I’ve enjoyed quite a few and used some myself. However, when half of my friends list posts nothing but memes, I feel like saying, “Use your words!” I feel like writing has fallen so out of favor, people are forgetting how to effectively communicate.
Shares
Again, lack of original thought and content. Chances are, at least three of my friends share the same link. It may not even be to a reliable, non-partisan, non-biased source. I actually unfollowed sites like ThinkProgress and The Other 98% because they were too biased, alarmist, and one-sided. Something about them just didn’t sit right with me. They’re not news sites.
Groups and Pages
For the love of all that is good on this green Earth, do not add me to groups without my permission or invite me to like pages. I unliked over 200 pages just to clean up my feed. I do not want to like any more pages. Of the groups that I am in, people post the same questions over and over again. Search feature, people! Use it! Or better yet, do a Google search! I see so many people asking for medical advice and giving medical advice– people who are not doctors. I had to leave the PNW hiking group I was in because so many people were downright mean. People are assholes all over the Internet, and it was turning me into a bitter, angry, misanthropic bitch. I ended up unfollowing 99% of the groups I’m in. The downside of pages is that you see what pages your friends like and their comments on them. So of course I go read the comments and fall into a trap of conservative trolls.
Friends Who Sell Things
Really, there aren’t enough ads on Facebook? I get that you want to sell things, but I’m not a girly-girl and I’m broke. I understand that you need to sell your products and make an income (or extra income), but I’m going to hide your posts.
GoFundMe and Birthday Fundraisers
This one makes me feel constant guilt. I have donated money to people who can’t pay rent, people with mounting medical bills, a trans woman who needed money to change her name, the Portland Rescue Mission, Community Alliance of Tenants, the National Parks Conservation Association, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Trailkeepers of Oregon, West Linn-Wilsonville schools lunch program, and Oregon Tech. I’m all tapped out. I have no more left to give. And I feel guilty every time I see someone in need, but I’ve been going over budget on groceries nearly every month for the past year and have been drawing money from savings to cover it. I don’t even have enough in savings to cover one month’s mortgage if I were to lose my job. I’m supporting my adult son while he goes to college, and he’s just getting started.
Chronic Selfies, Check-ins, etc.
General attention-seeking behavior. I’m guilty of this as well. It’s the “Look at me, I have a social life and I’m out doing fun things” post. At this point in my life, I’m going through some changes. I’m losing friends and I’ve been single for six years now. These posts make me feel lonely and inadequate as if something is wrong with me. I see friends post things they’re doing together and wonder why I wasn’t invited. They may know I would decline, but being invited makes a person feel valued. I need to stop this type of attention-seeking behavior, become more comfortable with myself and my life once again (I was once), and give a lot fewer fucks about what people think of me.
Polarized Posts
This is just the all-negative or all-positive posts. I have literally snoozed people because all the negativity overwhelms me. I feel helpless. On the other hand, the “My life is perfect” people annoy me. What ever happened to simply writing, “Here’s what’s on my mind and how I feel about it…?” or “Here’s what happened today and what I think/feel about it?” Hey, guess what? I love seeing pictures of kids and pets.
All Politics All the Time
This one has had an interesting effect on me. It’s similar to the all-negative because, let’s face it– we live in interesting times. However, my Facebook is an echo chamber. It’s the choir preaching to the choir. I know things are bad; I don’t need to feel worse about it by having it all in my face every single day. The effect it’s had on me, and the reason I needed to snooze everyone who does it, is this: I am, at my core, a very rebellious person. If my Facebook news feed is overtaken with liberal or radical ideology, my first instinct (and it is very involuntary; I can’t control it) is to rebel. For me, that would mean becoming more moderate and that is definitely not what I want to happen. So I had to shut it out for the good of everyone involved because I could feel it happening.
In Conclusion
These are all sources of anxiety, guilt, frustration, annoyance, and low self-worth for me.
The one thing in my life that has always been consistent is change. I don’t know why that is; maybe it’s my personality, maybe it’s that I get bored, or perhaps it’s just that if I’m not happy with the way things are, I change them. I’ve noticed over the past few years that this pattern in my life causes me to lose friends. Either we don’t grow and change at the same rate and grow apart, or they become resentful and suddenly become a bit hostile toward me or overly critical of me. I think most of the time it’s that we don’t have similar backgrounds, interests, and goals. Sometimes I just wake up one day and realize I’m not being treated respectfully. Anyway, I’m getting off-topic here. My point is, things change. Giving up Facebook for 27/28 days is a necessary change. At first I decided on logging in one day per month, but one day every four weeks makes more sense for me because I don’t want that particular day to fall on a weekend day and wind up wasting a valuable day off on Facebook. So I added an arbitrary weekday (Monday) to my Google calendar with a recurrence of every four weeks. So, every fourth Monday, I will log onto Facebook on my computer and spend an hour or two catching up with friends. My next scheduled Facebook day is Monday, October 15th.
I expect to find myself being more productive with all of this would-be Facebook time freed up. I also expect to find myself happier, because I won’t be frustrated and annoyed and have my self-worth suffering while I sit and compare myself and my life to other people and theirs. The increase in happiness will probably be compounded by the fact that I’ve been more productive. So far it’s been five full days and I’m already feeling better; calmer, more content, and more patient. A few friends have reached out to me (and that’s how you know who your true friends are). That’s been pretty eye-opening, you know, seeing who actually gives a fuck and who doesn’t. A whole lot more don’t than do, which is sad. I mean, we all have friends who proclaim, “Fuck Facebook I’m leaving! Here’s my number…” only to have them return the very next day. A lot of people cry “Wolf!” when it comes to leaving Facebook. I’m not leaving, I will just only log in one day out of every 28. But I can count on one hand, the people who have contacted me… and it has not been who I expected. People can surprise you in good ways, and in disappointing ones.
It’s taking some adjusting, that’s for sure. I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone and logged out of the site on my mobile browser. I deleted the cookies and cache just for good measure. I wanted to make getting there inconvenient, so that in my mind, I can’t use my phone to get there. I also removed the bookmark to it on the browser on my computer. The big challenge is, how do I get easily accessible quality content? I love to read about what’s going on. Admittedly, I got most of my news from Facebook (yes, I know… *hangs head in shame*… that’s not quality content).
Here’s my solution (so far– suggestions are welcome, so if you have any, email or text me) for both importing and exporting quality information to and from my brain:
Import
- Feedly feed reader where I added news feeds for science, tech, politics, running blogs, etc.
- A shortcut on the home page of my phone to CNN.com.
- Medium. My friend Mo writes on Medium, and I’ve found reading the articles curated for my interests to be quite addictive (but in a good way; this is high quality, insightful writing).
Export
- This blog, of course. Here I’ll write all of my long-winded thoughts.
- Twitter for sharing short blurbs as well as links to music, articles, books, etc. that I enjoy and think friends might, too.
- Instagram for sharing photos while I’m out and about. Nothing of professional quality, just your run-of-the-mill “This is what I saw/did today” stuff.
- Flickr. I’m rarely on Flickr anymore, but if/when I do take a good batch of professional-quality photos, I upload them there.
- Goodreads. I’m still not sure what the purpose of Goodreads is, but I’m on there… somewhere.
- And, of course, diet and fitness-related things: Strava, Garmin Connect, Fitbit, and MyFitnessPal. I’m on all of them.
Really, I’m everywhere on the Internet. I just need to be everywhere on the Internet in smaller, more infrequent chunks of time. I need to do more importing of quality information than exporting. More being present in the moment, aware of my surroundings. More being aware of the people around me, and spending more quality 1:1 face time with friends. More setting goals and achieving them and less talking about them. More eye contact with strangers. More books. More writing. More self-reflection. More finishing what I start. More of everything except social media.
