It's Complicated...

I have a complicated relationship with Facebook. As a vehicle for renewing contacts and staying in touch with faraway friends and colleagues, it’s unequalled. I can’t picture how or even whether I’d have moved back to California (through a series of wheels that began turning in 2011) if it weren’t for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild allowed me to retrieve the social capital I needed to move back to my homeland after 38 years away, and it was the mechanism that connected me with the gentleman. Facebook helps me feel connected even when I’m alone. I’ve received some of the warmest support of my life by sharing the best of times with all of you, and you have walked me through the very darkest of times, all via social media.

And yet…

Part of my conundrum is related to my innate preference to flop down on the sofa with my nose stuck in a book. I love to slurp up information and I always have, ever since I learned to read at the age of 3 (my first book was “The Little Red Hen” and my father was my teacher – thanks, Daddy!) I’m format agnostic; paper, Kindle, computer screen – it matters not. As often as not, though, lately my reading takes the form of whiling away hours refreshing my news feed and clicking on links, and I’m not reading nearly as many books (or anything else) as I used to.

But also, at least to my eye, Facebook seems to have changed. I get it about “monetizing” and algorithms and blah blah blah, even though I can’t outline them or tell you what they are. But Facebook is basically an advertising-driven business whose primary objective is NOT about keeping us in contact with each other, but instead is about driving our eyeballs over to advertisers’ pages. So now, instead of a news feed filled with friends’ activities, here’s what I see:

1) interest- and agenda-driven posts (in fact, I seem to get much of my breaking news from Facebook). Now those, I have a little control over and it’s been interesting to see how my news feed has changed as I’ve been “Unfollowing” and “Unliking” pages over the past couple of weeks. I’ve become a lot more selective about what pages and groups I follow.

I also see 2) meaningless click-bait quizzes (What Color Unicorn Did You Used To Be?) and engagement-bait posts (CONTROVERSIAL ASSERTION! YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO CONTAIN YOURSELF! WHAT DO YOU THINK?) I can’t control all of these, but I ignore what I can. Don’t take it personally; I just don’t care to put extraneous personal information out into the cloud-o-sphere if I can avoid it. Silly me, I also like to believe that I can still think for myself and not get taken in by something that’s purely about getting me to click over to a page, and not about conveying meaningful, useful information.

There are also 3) many cute or controversial videos that I seldom click through. I already feel like I’m spending too much time on Facebook and I don’t want to add to the burden; a minute-forty-five here and three minutes there can really add up!

And finally, I see 4) a lot of hatred, and this I DO have control over. I’m all in favor of respectful discussions between people who hold opposing views, and I can always expand my own world view, but life is too damn short to tolerate the flat-out abuse, hatred, judgment, and disrespect that I sometimes see flowing through the pixels. I’ve become a lot freer with the “Block” option and I’m not a bit sorry about it. Enough said.

I also don’t post nearly as much as I used to. I think that’s partly a function of where I am in life, partly about who’s in my life (and who’s not), and partly a function of simply having less time to spend on it. I still have plenty to say, but I don’t have time to squander. I have a job that harvests much more of my attention and energy than the one I left last year, and I won’t log into Facebook using my work computer. I also have a committed partner now (who, interestingly enough, is Not. On. Facebook very much if at all – hmmmm…) so staring at a computer screen is no longer my primary option for human contact. Spending an evening in a real-time conversation or movie-watching with a live human being is pretty nice!

So in the spirit of exploring and adjusting how I spend my time, I’ve 86’d the Facebook app from my phone, but kept the messenger app. They seem different to me and the messenger app rarely, if ever, prevents me from participating in my real life the way the Facebook app did. I know it means no more check-ins and no more on-the-fly photos, and I’m okay with that. I’m keeping my account, not going away, but I’ll be looking more carefully at, and aiming to be much more intentional about, how much time I spend on Facebook.

I didn’t turn this into a status update (except to post the link to this post) because I don’t figure it’s front-page news to anyone except me and possibly the gentleman. My hope, though, is that I can attain a new, heathier-for-me balance with social media while still staying in touch with the people I care about (I’m lookin’ at you!) We’ll see how the experiment turns out.

Do you have any thoughts or ideas?