Wednesday, March 23, 2016

I gave up Facebook for Lent and this is what happened...

Absolutely Nothing!

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... no seriously. I probably did miss an engagement announcement or some really cute baby photos, but mostly, I didn't miss Facebook at all. In fact, I would give it up altogether, except for a few connection on there that are precious and important to me - like other adoptive moms, and some far away friends whom I don't get to see in real life.

I don't know about yours, but for the last 6 months my Facebook "newsfeed" has looked something like this:

Trump
Hillary
Trump
Bernie
baby photo
Bernie
Bernie
Trump

No matter what new sophisticated emoticons FB puts next to the "life" button, a newsfeed full of negativity and politics was really stressing me out. I found I was dreading opening it up, but that I also was addicted to looking at it every day. Facebook was sucking up a lot of my precious time, and making me stressed out and disconnected.

So when the Lenten season came along, even though I'm not Catholic, I decided to give up this stressful habit for a while and see what happened.

I was surprised by how easy it was. I'm not the best at will power (ask my too tight pants), but I was never really tempted to cheat. I made it easy for myself: I deleted the app from my phone and i-pad, and I erased my browser history so Facebook wouldn't pop up. Still, I could have easily peeked, and I wasn't tempted.

So Lent is almost over... now what? I've been thinking about that quite a bit. Do I quit altogether? Limit my "friends" list? Try to monitor how much time I'm on it? I decided to copy my screen limits for my kids and make Facebook a weekend-only thing. Last Sunday I tiptoed back online and peeked- first at the Ethiopian adoption pages I'd actually missed, and then at my friends list and privacy settings. Finally I started scrolling through my newsfeed again... sure enough, all the passionate posts about Bernie had not changed the election, and all the passionate diatribes against Trump had not stopped him. Sigh.
you know, just checking my likes...

How do you manage Facebook in your life? Or have you left the book?




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