Facebook About-Face

I was late to the Facebook party. My friends had already logged on and tried several times to get me to join, but I was hesitant. I don't know about stuff like this so it makes me uncomfortable. Why do I need it? Can't we just email each other? I say email because I didn't text until about a year and a half ago. I'm late to so many parties! But as for Facebook, why would anyone want to know what I'm doing? And do I really need to know what everyone else is doing? Like seemingly everyone else on the planet though, I eventually joined and realized that judging from the 'like' counts and comments, people did care what I was doing. Ahhh, instant validation; it's like Facebook was created for people like me. I knew what my friends were up to and saw photos of their vacations and their kids. It was informative, fun, and allowed me to connect with a lot of people whom I hadn't seen or talked to in quite some time. Pretty neat.

Fast-forward nearly three years, and Facebook has become a habit. Not exactly a bad one, but I found myself checking it at nearly every free moment of my day. I'd mindlessly touch the little blue button on my phone a few times an hour sometimes. I am a busy person. Very busy. I don't have a lot of down time so why am I spending those precious minutes reading about others' lives? Most of the time it's not even about their lives. Some write their opinions on issues I may or may not care about, their complaints about mundane tasks everyone else has to do too, what they ate for breakfast/lunch/dinner, how far and fast they ran, or--my personal favorite--the ":-(" which is nothing but an invitation to everyone to ask what's wrong. And that's just scratching the surface; there are a ton of worthless things to read on Facebook. There's also the information in my news feed I never asked to see--statuses and photos of non-friends that have been commented on by mutual friends. Do strangers see my updates and photos? I've taken steps to keep my page private. At least I think I have. Have I really? What can strangers and non-friends see? Suddenly I'm uncomfortable again.

It's not just the privacy issues, though. It's also about realizing how I feel after reading my news feed. Sure people post good things on Facebook that make me happy such as, "Lila danced beautifully at her recital. We're so proud of her." But often my reactions to Facebook posts lead me to be irritable and sarcastic. Oh, you're getting another mani/pedi. Your life is soooo hard. Or, your Dyson broke so you have to use your regular vacuum and the tanning place forgot to call you to let you know they were closing early and then Starbucks messed up your drink? Oh you poor, poor dear. Don't even get me started on passive-aggressive rants or veiled digs. People who use Facebook as a weapon are a special kind of stupid. Posts like that only prove to the world how foolish the writer is.

See? My buttons are being pushed and I'm not even reading Facebook. I'm happy to take a break from it. I have been Facebook-free for five days now. I've gotten a lot more accomplished, including a detailed blog entry on exactly why I'm not using Facebook for awhile. Maybe forever. Time will tell. So far I've found that I'm a lot more upbeat and a lot less jaded. I think it's working. I feel a whole lot better.