I loved the comments and thoughts on my social media post yesterday. Thanks all!
I think I’d like to try the “only use Facebook on my laptop” idea for a while.
Cal Newport often suggest this to people who may have an actual need or use for social media (e.g. an artist who needs to stay up on other artists’ new work, or something). He always says to schedule social media time in your week, much like one might sit down with coffee to read the newspaper for 30 minutes on a Sunday morning.
You don’t walk around with the newspaper in your pocket and read 2 lines, 35 times a day. That would be… crazy. 😄 You sit down, you read the paper for a chunk of time, and then you put it away and move on with your life.
That whole idea just sounds a lot more appealing than picturing someone opening and closing a newspaper repeatedly all day long. Hahaha.
In Cal’s recent episode this week, he was ironically talking about phones and phone use in his intro. I liked this quote:
It’s not about whether these things (phones/social media) are useless or useful. It’s whether on the whole you spend more time with the stuff you care about, or less. Is it making your life richer or less richer?“
This struck a chord with me, because I (and many other people I know) will often argue, Well, there are GOOD things about Facebook! I stay up to date with family! And real friends! Travel ideas! Recipes! Funny stuff! Schools news! Articles! Connection! Etc.
And that is all fine and dandy, and not completely untrue. But I like how Cal points how that that is not the point. No one SAID there are no good things about it. There ARE, factually, some good things about phones and even social media.
At the end of the day, though, the question is: is it a net positive, or a net negative? Because if for you, or me, it is a NET NEGATIVE, well….then the good things are literally outweighed by the bad, and it’s no longer serving you (or me).
Anyway, it’s such an interesting topic. For someone like me, who has been on Facebook since… 2006? So almost 20 years? The idea of completely getting off of it feels a bit like getting rid of my microwave, or my pillow, or maybe my left arm. LOL.
I really do feel like overall it is a net negative for me, though, especially lately. There’s the whole aspect of the content itself, like I described yesterday, being anxiety-provoking and stress-inducing. But when I really think about it, even worse than that for me is the fragmented attention piece. The constant pull to check it, day in, day out, day after day. Ew!!! I only get, supposedly, around 4,000 weeks on this Earth, and I need to spend every single day going around looking at random bits of info being fed to me by an algorithm on my phone??
I also know that if someone came to me and said, “Okay Kaelyn, you have exactly X years left in your life. You get to plan and schedule EVERYTHING you’ll do in these next X years and minutes, whatever you want!, but you have to lock it all in right now. So, let’s put this down in stone: how much time, and when, would you like to allot to scrolling ads, reels, articles, photos and updates from that one guy from your high school Physics class that you haven’t actually talked to in 24 years?”
Putting it like that, I assure you I would not say, well, I think I’d like to spend 504,000 minutes, or 8,400 hours, or 50 entire weeks of my total 4,000 weeks doing that. (This would equal approximately 50 minutes of use per day x30 years, and doesn’t take into account all the time already spent during the past 20 years!) 😅 I feel like I would say…. “None! That sounds like a dumb and wasteful thing to schedule into this very limited time I’m being offered.”
Sigh. I’m still not sure I can quite convince myself to completely pull the plug, though. What can I say, old habits die hard, and there are those good things…. But I think I’d maybe like to give the laptop method a try for a while and see what I think. More intentional use, for specific purposes only, in defined doses. (Although, I haven’t accessed FB since last Friday, and I honestly still have no real desire to, so I guess I’ll wait until I even feel like it, first!)
Quote of the Day:
Singer, songwriter, and actress Dolly Parton on gratitude:
“I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life, because I learned early that if you don’t, you get disappointed a lot. If you do, you might be pleasantly surprised quite often.
I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. By keeping my eyes open for unexpected joys, I find the world gives back more than we sometimes think.”
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for this new picture I snapped of Charlie yesterday! He wanted one of my pretzels… haha. I just think it’s such a cute shot! I made it my new phone lock screen.
GRATEFUL KAE 
Have you ever tried giving up social media for a finite period of time? I gave up social media for Lent probably 2-3 times. It was a good trial run of stepping away from it and didn’t feel so permanent. I would deactivate my account during Lent and then reactivate it after. I think seeing that I could do it helped me give it up for good in Dec 2021. It has honestly not been hard AT ALL. In 2022, my word of the year was connection and I wrote down 4 people each month that I wanted to connect with via text, phone, facetime or in person. That way I was focused on still connecting with people. It takes more effort than using social media but it’s way more meaningful and fulfilling.
It does help that Phil still has FB, though. My family has a private group and my mom often posts updates there, so he can pass those along to me. But even if he didn’t, I would just miss out on some updates but they’d get to me eventually.
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I was going to leave the same advice! I gave up Instagram every Lent for a few years and then just officially got off of social media totally…so freeing, if not extremely weird at first. I kept picking up my phone and then remembering I had nothing to do on it! Good luck on your journey 🙂
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I don’t think I ever really have for an extended time! The most has usually been self-imposed “social media breaks” but usually has only been a week or two at most. It is definitely a good idea and I could see how a longer planned break would help to REALLY feel what it would be like…while also not feeling so definite/ permanent/ high “pressure”!
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Setting the Instagram app for 20 min/day limit on my phone has been helpful for me. It stops me from overdoing it but also I do like some content. So when I’m on, I search that content out and it makes me think before clicking so I’m not checking it 20x for one min, but instead opening to look for 5-10 min a couple times a day. I have also hidden tons of people and specifically looked up what I want more of to follow i.e. gardening experts. I figure over time I might lower the 20 min but for now it seems like a reasonable amount for my day.
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Well, I have tried the app limit thing but it’s just so easy to override! Haha. I do feel like 20 min a day is a perfectly reasonable amount of time, especially if done in two 5-10 minute breaks. I think I might enjoy it way more if I used it like that, AND made a point to really curate my feed better. I literally have never gone in and hidden/ unfollowed almost anyone, except maybe 1-2 people over the years that were really obnoxious!
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I just now read yesterday’s post. Ah, Facebook, it’s a tough one. Four years ago I stopped going on Facebook, which was mostly a good thing. I did miss some message that people left me (that was bad.) Then just recently I went back on, because my son posted something and told me I should change my profile picture. So I did that. Then, Muffins faster mom asked to see a current photo of Muffin (I had forgotten we were facebook friends) so I posted one, then she responded with a baby photo of Muffin! Then, I realized one of my friends had posted photos of her recent trip to Iceland… I really got sucked back in. But I don’t have it on my phone. I think a good policy is to schedule a certain amount of time for facebook, and that’s it. We can check back in and see how we’re doing with this.
I love the Dolly quote and photo of Charlie!
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That’s the thing- it’s SO easy to get sucked back into it!! Every time I take a break, it feels totally fine and I barely miss it… but then when I go back, it pulls me right back in!!! Argh! I still haven’t looked at it now in a week, but I might go in this weekend. 😉
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I think trying to just open FB on the laptop and scheduling time for it, is a good option to try. Who knows? Maybe it works for you and you’re like – yup, I am ok with scheduling in this time for FB.
For me personally, I know I just have to be very intentional where I go and look when I open the app… it’s so tempting to just start scrolling but that’s also what is so “frustrating” about wasting time there.
I’ve been reading the “Opt Out Project” (google it – it’s a whole series of things) and regarding social media, the author suggests that you can keep social media accounts (e.g. FB) but really dumb it down so only the people/groups that you REALLY want to keep remain, delete everything else. I’ve been working on this a little bit (deleting groups and people and pages that I am connected with).
Let us know how it goes!
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I think one thing I actually sometimes do like, or I think I like, about social media actually IS the random nature of it, sometimes. Sometimes I really do get “fed” things that are either really funny, or interesting, or just plain kinda fun to look at (like, random travel idea posts or recipes or personal development stuff or “teen mom” content, etc.). But then there’s so much other stuff that is NOT good. That’s the issue! I do wonder if I could ever get to the point of using it like Megan above commented- a set amount of time per day. I think the worst part for me is that constant in and out nature of it. I think maybe that screws with the algorithm, too? Like is it like, ooh, this lady is a gold mine- she keeps opening the app! Quick, feed her more and more!!! haha.
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I rarely get on FB because it annoys the crap out of me how much of it is NOT helpful or what I want to see but I end up reading it anyway. I haven’t really used it much over the last 10 years or so, and definitely got nearly 100% off it (without deleting anything) during the pandemic. The online public arguments were just too much for me. However, I kind of have to use it when traveling (I actually have a post scheduled already re this!) because the groups are a good way, and sometimes the only way, to meet other people. As a solo traveler, I cannot just sit in my room by myself all the time, and I am not going to go to a bar and try to meet people, so often FB is the only option. So I still have the app on my phone, but I generally go in every few days for about an hour, check the groups and then get out. Also, I did notice there is now a “friends only” feed, which could be good, as part of the thing I don’t like is all of the ads and crap that I don’t care about stuffing up my feed! I think laptop only, and scheduled, is a great way to handle it though!
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I will have to check out that Friends Only feed. However, I do also get a lot of value from the travel groups! I used to use Trip Advisor a lot for crowd sourcing ideas, questions etc, but now I feel like the Facebook groups are even more active and a better resource! As I’m going through these comments, I feel more and more like I really maybe need to go in a be ruthless about curating a better feed, first and foremost. The online public arguments are so stressful to me. I think the hard thing with social media is that you never know what you’re going to get or where stressful/negative/things you don’t want to see are going to pop up. Not to mention how FB now seems to feed so many ads and “suggested” accounts… perhaps there is a way to turn some of that off. I’ll have to look.
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Charlie is really cute in this pic, innocent and focused 🙂
I like the idea of net negative/positive in many things, including work. there are always part of work that I don’t like (long work days when i’m on business trip) but overall it’s net positive. Same applies to social media of course and it’s great that you think of it that way to make the decision to reduce its consumption now.
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Yes, that concept does help to zoom out and think about the big picture! I was thinking of the term specifically related to my social media use, but I agree, it could be a good one to apply to almost anything!
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This is my problem with Instagram. I did do a big purge right after the election because I decided I did NOT need to get my news from social media. I deleted a ton of people who just seem to post political things and have really tried to curate a feed that is mostly dog/cat videos and bookish content. Of course, I think in the past few months I’ve been clicking on and looking at more political stuff so that just brings MORE of it to my feed so I need to be better about not falling for the algorithm!
Right now, I have the Downtime feature scheduled for Sunday nights – Thursday nights. It clicks on at 8pm and doesn’t click off until 9am the next day. That helps a lot! Sure I can override it but I try really hard not to do that!
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Haha, totally know what you mean! That’s the issue- even though I truly WANT to avoid constant political stuff, it can be so hard to resist clicking!! And then it feeds the algorithm further… argh….
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