I have no clue what’s happening on Facebook, and it is liberating. I’m not living some kind of ancient existence I still have Instagram. Instagrams platform is less drama. But honestly, being off Facebook has helped me regulate my phone use so that it’s no longer eating up my day. Not to mention my phone battery last days instead of hours now.
I really only have good things to say about being off Facebook. You don’t really realize how much time you waste on Facebook until you quit. And once you’ve been off it for a while, you start to see how much you don’t miss it. I’ve been off Facebook for 3 months now and will never open an account again.
Did you know there was a study done on Facebook users and 5 out of 10 people envy the experiences of others posted on Facebook. 1 out of 3 people envy how happy other people seem on Facebook and 4 out of 10 people envy the success of others on Facebook. Pretty sad huh?
Facebook literally makes us evaluate our lives against others, which in turn affects us psychologically. There will always be someone more successful, having more travel experiences or even someone more beautiful than us out there and that’s ok. But when you are constantly scrolling to fill your time it will eat at you, no matter who you are.
I gave up Facebook because it just got old. One thing I loved about Facebook when I first made a profile was reading good articles from certain pages I followed. Slowly but surely those got old as well. My news feed was just full of negativity, over posting lonely people trying to claim their lives are so busy and happy, and news which you never know if it’s fake or real trying to put fear into you. Oh and let’s not forget political this and political that! Same shit different day.
Facebook is like a drug and until your clean and sober from it you don’t realize how much you were addicted. The average person checks their news feed once every 20-40 minutes. The average teenager spends up to 9 hours a day on social media with most of that time being on Facebook. There is so much we could be doing with that wasted time.
What I learned from having Facebook and then giving it up was what really matters in life. One of those things is privacy. I realized I could care less to post pictures of my happy moments for everyone to see and comment on. I definitely didn’t need to “check into” places so people would know where I was all the time. I realized I like the good old days where you’d run into someone you hadn’t seen in a long time and were able to ask how they’ve been. I like not knowing what they post because the run in becomes more meaningful.
Along with Facebook I gave up reading or watching the news. Now…you can’t totally break away from news but I have made it a huge point not to go searching for it. What news I need to know will fall into my lap. My Facebook feed was filled with news between sites I followed and people sharing it. I realized how much reading or watching news would affect me. Sometimes the stories were so bad I would go into an anxious state of mind. I got sick of it. There’s a lot of bad in the world and it’s constantly in our faces because fear drives our current society.
The world and life itself are beautiful things. Now that I’m not focusing on who, what, when and why of the Facebook world I am focusing on my life and how grateful I am for all that I have and worked hard for. I am happy for all the people who are more successful than me and look to them as role models instead of being envious. Not having Facebook lifted this dark cloud I didn’t even know I was under.
Thank you for reading and please like, comment or share! If you’ve given up Facebook I’d love to hear how it affected you.
True Growth 