The “me” in social media is fading. Slowly. Now, I am not completely going off the radar. I will still be using some, but not actively.
Let us start with Facebook. I was addicted to it. On a normal day, I would spend ~8 hours, just scrolling through. On special days, I was on facebook when I was not deeply sleeping. This was definitely too much. It may be the same as what others are experiencing, or maybe it was just me.
I wanted to go way back to when it started but, honestly, I don’t remember when this was. I had an old account, public to everyone. Had a lot of friends, both those I knew and didn’t. I had around 800+. I was happy with it. The more the merrier, right? I was communicating with old friends, creating new ones. But at some point the news feed became suffocating. Back then, there were no settings that could hide the posts or block persons. So there were 2 options. I either had to go through my list of friends and delete those I did not want, or I delete the account. I opted for the latter. I was not patient enough to go through a list to determine how much contact I had with a person or not.
Then I created a new account. This time I was going to manage it properly.
Rule # 1: The account should be private.
Rule # 2: Friends of friends will be able to send requests.
Rule # 3: Only add those that I knew personally.
Rule # 4: Remove anyone who gets on my nerves.
The first few years were okay. I was diligently following the rules I set.
Sadly, I had to break rule number 3 later. More often than I had hoped. This was where I started failing. The reason I added unknown friends was either they were distant relatives of mine, or they were friends of relatives. I hated being called a snob by family and friends. At some point, I was back where I started. I had the same dilemma as with my older account. Luckily this time, Facebook offered more options than just deleting. So I managed.
Fast forward to 2019. I posted a lot, added stories, had my Instagram account connected, liked posts, commented on some to start conversations, and even joined groups. I was refreshing the page manually to see if anything happened to what I actively did. A like, a comment, a message maybe? Was I mentioned somewhere? Is there something I could share? Did I mention the right person on a post? Shall I send this friend a message? Do I have friends I have not added yet? Should I start a conversation with a complete stranger?
I knew something was off. I was going back to old habits. It was not right for me to spend too much time on this social media page. So I decided to quit. December 31, 2019 marked my last post. Then I deactivated the account.
Yes, deactivated. I still wanted to use Messenger to contact family.
The first few days were weird. When I woke up, the first thing I did was take my phone, and open Facebook. But I already uninstalled it, bummer. I checked Messenger to see if someone would message me, but nada. I then switched to something else for a minute, then stopped. It got better as the days went by. And at some point, I got rid of the habit. I was getting better.
I spent my days on more important things, and that made me feel good.
I actually activated my account for 2 days in early 2021. I wanted to check on someone, and I wanted to check how addicted I am still. I can tell you I was on Facebook for 8 hours in those 2 days. So it is getting better. But I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon.
Now Instagram is a different story I will tell on a different post.
Silke 