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I Love Facebook

I challenge you to remove the Facebook App for a month just to see how you feel about losing Facebook or social media from your mobile. You will notice that your head is out of your mobile device more often, that you are more engaged with the people around you, and your environment in general, and that you are more likely to be able to have interesting thoughts and ideas while sitting - supposedly bored - in a coffee shop.

The Bedtime Ramblings Social Media

Simon Harper

08 Mar 2020

5 min read

Give me any spare time at all I will be instantly looking to see which ‘people are being awesome’, buying ‘better’ but unwanted products from Kickstarter and indiegogo via their unsolicited ads, or becoming furious at ‘big-mike’ and his comments on Brexit and the state of the UK under the European Union.

The constant noise of social media, particularly Facebook, had become all-encompassing. Every spare minute was devoted to it, any free time was spent with, mostly generated, content. I could look at the Facebook app on my mobile for ‘just a minute’ and two-hours would pass without me even knowing it had gone.

It became obvious that spending lots of time on Facebook was not doing me any good, and indeed I was losing time from doing things that I consider to be more productive. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to completely remove myself from social media because there are some benefits; and indeed many people I know and love are on social media. The big problem was how invasive social media on my phone became; there was no escape from the constant notifications and chatter that arose from it being ‘mobile’.

And so 4 months ago I removed the Facebook app from my phone. In that time, I have not looked at Facebook or interacted with it on my mobile device and I only now look at it on my desktop computer at work for a small amount of time when I arrive, and a small amount of time after lunch.

So if you’ve noticed that I’ve not been as responsive as I used to be (maybe you’ve not) then the reason is because I am not being constantly bombarded with updates, notifications, or pushes which are trying to get me to interact with the Facebook mobile app.

This has been a fantastic change for me and I do not intend to return to mobile Facebook or mobile social media in the future. It is very unlikely that you need to know what I’m thinking about any particular topic at the time I’m thinking it.

Out of Touch?

I did think that I would become out-of-touch and I wouldn’t be able to keep this up for the 4 months. In reality I am slightly more out of touch and this has been nothing but a good thing. For example in the recent Iran-USA conflict I was spared the constant noise of a 24-hour news media who need to make sensational headlines about the coming Armageddon. For one thing, I have no influence over any of this, so knowing about it doesn’t allow me to act upon anything.

So why am I not hopelessly under informed, well indeed I have evolved other ways of getting news and listening to more thoughtful longer-form work as opposed to the, often, ill-formed ramblings of some sensationalist media pundit, or some ill thought out discussion comments that seem to be more like Spam than anything else. It seems to me that it is better to think about what is happening and to evolve a considered opinion as opposed to the short term gratification of an instant reaction to anything that comes up on my stream.

I now get my news and entertainment content from considered editorials mostly from podcasts, books and long-form news articles as well as YouTube (mostly for entertainment purposes).

Note

So I challenge you to try this out for a month just to see how you feel about losing Facebook or social media from your mobile.

So I challenge you to try this out for a month just to see how you feel about losing Facebook or social media from your mobile. You will notice that your head is out of your mobile device more often, that you are more engaged with the people around you, and your environment in general, and that you are more likely to be able to have interesting thoughts and ideas while sitting - supposedly bored - in a coffee shop. Setting up your entire day with diversions means that you are not able to cut out some space for the brain to take over and interesting stuff to arise.

Important

I takes silence and time for everything that you’ve experienced in that day to be processed and the results of that processing to come into your mind.

Social Media Has a Place

You’ll also notice that you become less jumpy, and that you become more able to engage in long conversations. To be able to just stand there without the constant need to get back to the social media in your pocket, or not be thinking ‘what am I missing by not being on social media right NOW’.

I’m not saying that social media is bad. I’m just saying that it has a place, and like everything, we need to know what that place is. I suggest that it has a place where we can interact with it for its positive benefits and then put it away and move on to the people who are currently in the place we reside; and to also make space for us to have longer more deep experiences which can only occur in the real world.

Return of the PodCast

I have become a massive fan of podcasts, in fact podcasts are making a fast resurgence, especially because they can now become monetized so people can earn a living making good content. They are not subject to the whims of one particular platform - such as YouTube, they are syndicated and arise on your podcast application as soon as they’re released (if you are subscribed), they are typically in a longer-form than most news articles or YouTube content, and they allow you to focus more on what’s being said, the ideas being presented, as opposed to the the visual look and feel, which is so prevalent on visual media platforms.

In the future I’m going to make a series of recommendations about the places I think are good to become more informed about what’s going on; and hear views and opinions - in some cases views and opinions I disagree with.

Note

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