It's been 5 months since I left Facebook. Yes, I completely removed Facebook from my life. I deleted my account and I have no secondary accounts, so there was no way for me to get on unless someone gave me a glance at their account feed.
At first, it was okay. I had a calm and relaxing feeling about it; like taking a vacation from work and the stresses of life. However, I did notice myself checking for the app every time I was on my phone, just out of pure habit.
The feeling of escaping drama and addiction only lasted about a week. The following week I was having withdraws. I seriously considered opening my account again, but never did. I went back and forth in my mind about activating my account for about a month. Then slowly the feeling started to fade. With each passing month it became easier to not feel remorse or the urge to get Facebook back in my life.
I deleted Facebook in August of 2015 and it is now January of 2016. By November I had pretty much lost the instant or random urges to log onto Facebook. It could have just been time taking its course or maybe the holidays and all that business took over, but whatever the reason was, life became much easier for me away from Facebook. Now facing 5 months out of the ring of the biggest social media site I'm feeling pretty good. There is very little of me that desires to even be on Facebook at all. The biggest thing I have noticed since completely letting go of Facebook is that I have way more time on my hands. I guess I never realized how much time I spent on Facebook, but looking back it's not hard to see why- I uploaded pictures from every event I attended; I updated my status multiple times a day, most days; I scrolled through my feed to see friends and family constantly; I posted memes; I posted videos; I played Facebook games. It's almost as if I didn't do anything in life without involving Facebook in some accept of my life and now that I'm an outsider to all of this I see others held captive by this site. Even if they are not as into Facebook as I was, there's something about Facebook that seems to captivate and hold someone. I notice people constantly checking their Facebook feeds when they're on their phone. I can be out to dinner with someone and the one thing that usually tends to have my conversation ignored is Facebook. I must admit, I was much the same way as my friends and family that I make fun of now for thier Facebook addictions.
I'm not harping on Facebook though. I don't hate Facebook and I don't regret having one. It's because of Facebook that for so many years I was able to stay in contact with friends and family all over the world. Facebook does make it easy to share lifes great moments with others and now with the help of apps it helps you remember those awesome memories. Facebook Messenger was awesome too! I find it much harder to stay in contact with people now and I've lost contact with several people. Facebook makes it so you really don't need to have people's phone numbers, addresses, or contact information. It's handy but it also makes you really lazy, as if smart phones alone didn't do that. I was sad at first to have lost contact with a lot of people, but in the end I remembered one of my life mottos- If someone wants something bad enough they're going to find a way no matter what, otherwise they didn't really want it that much. This applies to my situation. I announced on Facebook before leaving it that if anyone wanted my phone number, email, or address to stay in contact they could. Most people did not respond. Yes, out of 300+ contacts on Facebook, only a handful responded. Now, I didn't leave this post up for long, only a few hours. It's possible that many people did not see it due to the lag on updates via phones or tablets, but either way, if someone really wanted to contact me most of them would be able to find a way. My family and very close friends are still in contact with me, so I do not feel sad at all. However, if there is any draw to Facebook at all now, it's purely the fact that I miss having that instant connection with friends and family that I cannot be near.
It's not like I don't still do the functions of Facebook though. I still post pictures of my life via Instagram. I still update my life, findings, and opinions via Google+ or Twitter. I blog, so my longer winded versions of my life, findings, and opinions are out there. I also have this site which allows people to keep up-to-date with what I'm doing. The difference between using Facebook and all these other apps and programs is that these other formats are typically used for a more general audience and not friends, family, and people you just met. They're more freeing and since people aren't constantly "liking", "poking", or commenting there is so much more peace of mind. - This goes hand-in-hand with my theory that there is a such thing as "too much" or "being too big". I'm not a fan of corporations or "big business" when it comes to people's needs and personal time, because they're simply just too big! It's easy for an employee of a major corporation to get lost in the shuffle, because they're one of thousands-millions. It's just as easy for a consumer or customer to get lost in the shuffle as well, because they're also just 1 of thousands of consumers on top of the employees the corporation has to take care of. Facebook is like the mother corporation of social media and the rest of the sites and apps are just mid-sized businesses or "mom and pop" stores. While there's a lot of good one can do with Facebook, it's so easy to get lost in it and lose touch with why you're really on there in the first place. It's so easy to get caught up in games, drama, celebrities, debates, etc. When most of us log onto to Facebook just to keep in contact with friends and family.
I've talked about the lazy factor before; how smart phones and apps today make us lazy. This whole experience has shown me that more than ever and proven what traditional research has proven time and time again- Hard work pays off and the more we put into something the more we care. Facebook takes the work out of everything when it comes to socialzing. Instagram makes us edit our photos and search for what we want; Twitter makes us think about what we're writing, because we're only allowed so many characters; Even this site makes me work much harder to update it then my Facebook profile. I definitely do not have the time to constantly update it, but that's a good thing! Life should not be spent all on one site or app to the point of losing touch with other great things in life. In the last couple of months I have gotten a much better handle on my workouts, my writing, my errands, my focus, my overall time management, and my overall goals.
The big questions always come up from people who know I don't have Facebook:
"Will you ever get back on Facebook?"
"When are you going to get back on Facebook?"
"How do you not have a Facebook?"
Honestly, I'm not sure if I ever will get back on Facebook. The more time goes on, the more I see I don't need it. Like I said before it's a site that makes everything in life super easy, but if everything in life were so simple and easy then we would not be the best we can be. It's a proven fact that hard work, persistence, and dedication are what makes people great at whatever it is they want to do or be. If I ever do get back on Facebook, it will be at least a complete year before I do. After seeing life now without it and feeling that my overall life has improved without, I would like to at least see what a whole year without it is like. I've come to learn that Facebook is not everything. We as a society have made it into this necessity that it really isn't. We don't need Facebook. We need apps, tools, and resources that help us achieve goals and share information, and that allow us to be creative and expressive. What we don't need is to become lazy and caught up in others lives in a way that takes away from the joys of life and the ultimate goals we are trying to achieve with technology.
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