I’ve been on Facebook for about 8 or 9 years now. I signed up when I had my daughter, thinking I’d post pictures of my beautiful new bundle of joy to share with family and friends, and probably not much else besides keeping up with family members I didn’t see that often. And that’s what I did, and have done, over the years, but Facebook, as we all know, isn’t always that simple.
I learned that I could post much more than that, including sharing memes from other FB users, or posting them from Pinterest, or articles from other websites, or videos from YouTube. Even my own WordPress posts could be linked to my FB account so my family and friends could see what I was up to with my writing. And it was fun, for long time. I’d often post memes or quotes that I felt expressed my personality or sense of humor or topics I held close to my heart. And I’d scroll through my feed, reading and watching others’ posts to see what they were up to, how they were feeling, what was going on in their world.
The problem, of course, is that it can get a bit addictive. It can take on an importance that just doesn’t exist. It can suck you in, and before you know it, an hour has gone by. That’s an hour I could have been writing, or at least doing something more constructive. And what have I accomplished through all that scrolling? Well, nothing. I’ve seen heated and nasty political arguments. Ignorant and offensive memes. Horrific animal abuse photos and videos. What someone ate for dinner. Quizzes that will tell me what animal I am or what my 80’s theme song is. Bland inspirational quotes. There are some genuinely funny or entertaining bits, and sometimes even something heartwarming, but more and more, it’s just upsetting, and I found myself questioning why I was even on the site at all. No one there ever reads my blog posts anyway. What’s the purpose of this? Don’t I have anything better to do?
Yes, I do. So I deactivated my account. I didn’t permanently delete it; I wanted the option to go back there someday, when I was feeling ready to connect with my “friends” again. Messenger is still active if someone really wants to get in touch with me. But I really don’t think I’ll miss it too much. Now I just have to control my screen time on Pinterest and YouTube…
Do you spend a lot of time on Facebook? Do you like the site, or does it just give you headaches? Drop me a line and we’ll talk about it!
Over a year ago, I did exactly the same. Your description was spot-on. I did have the added burden though of family members, whom I love and cherish, who hold different political and social opinions, i.e., they’re conservative and I’m liberal. That would be okay, but as you mentioned the depth of hatred was far beyond anything I wanted to contend with. What I love about WordPress blogging is that you have so much more control and to tell the truth it is a bit more civilized. The time issue is still something to deal with, but at least most of my blogging friends are writers too so hey it’s basically time well spent. Most of the time! 🙂
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I agree, Paul–I’d rather spend time blogging than tooling around on Facebook. It’s much more worth the time put in. Thanks for reading and your input!
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