Last week I began a two-month Facebook fast. I started doing this a few years ago and I always find it to be refreshing to step away from social media for a time. In today’s climate (politically and socially, especially) it pays to stay away and avoid the constant barrage of finger-pointing and blame that seems to flow so effortlessly. I’ve said many times over the years that the only reason I joined Facebook was to see pictures of peoples kids, pets, and food. I’m there to post pictures of my kids, pets and food. That’s it. I’m not there for political, religious or societal discussions which aren’t so much discussions as they are vitriolic invectives complete with false data at worst, or twisted facts at best. I don’t want to have to go fact-check every meme that someone posts.
I’ll admit it: when it comes to Facebook, I want shallow, happy, fun posts that contain no drama whatsoever. That’s what Facebook is for.
And I’m not saying that all of my friends post these kinds of posts on FB. Far from it, on both sides of the fence most of my FB friends are pretty good. But occasionally a post sneaks in – again, on both sides – that cause my eyes to involuntarily roll just a bit.
So once or twice a year I delete the app from my phone (which helps with my phone’s paltry storage, too!) and ignore the bookmarks on my computers. I’ll continue to use Messenger so people can talk to me if they need to, but for the most part, I skip Facebook unless an event requires me to login and comment.
And you know what’s great? After the first 3-4 days of my mental itching to see what people are talking about or doing, I find that I begin NOT to miss it. My instinct to hit the icon with that blue/white “F” goes away. The need to check in at every movie or restaurant disappears.
And during the fast, I continue to get my news via Reuters and BBC UK, which are less biased than just about every US source of news in existence.
