Recently, I made a personal decision with my family that I would eliminate Facebook. In the process I also eliminated all other forms of social media, excluding Twitter which I barely use.
I am the admin on the Yacolt Discussion Form on Facebook along with one other member. For the first few days I realized that I was still constantly grabbing my phone, looking for the apps and realizing that it wasn’t there and remembering that I had removed it. I spent some time wondering what others were up to, how my free speech page was doing and reaching out to friends via Messenger. Hell, just so you know, I even missed calling my oldest son, who is 26, because I didn’t get the reminder from Facebook. You know what else I did during this time so far? I noticed that I was more engaged at home. I found more time for projects, listened better than my kids, and stopped having to ask them to repeat their questions and comments. I found I had more time to focus, and while it would be a lie to say the last seven days has been easy, (I still search for Facebook and social media on my phone) it has not been.
Over a year ago, I wrote a letter to the editor called “Social media is destroying our community.”
The date was June 15, 2020, and at that time I talked about many issues. Since that time, I have continued to respectfully disagree on many forums, to share ideas, and thoughts, and to be bombarded with negative comments. The reality is that no matter what the negative comments were, I am thick-skinned, and let it roll off like a duck. But did I really? I continued to let my voice be heard, to explain my views and to get more understanding of other’s thoughts.
So far it has been a week since I shut down social media in my life. I get updates from my daughters, I get updates from my sons, but I don’t open the app. I hope to make it 30 days. I then hope to start a campaign of No Facebook November where I will use October to promote turning off social media for the entire month. Let’s not get confused on what social media is or isn’t. I do not include YouTube videos, or other media that is similar. I am talking about Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Mewe, Get’er, Snapchat and other social media platforms. Who will join in this call? Who knows, but if the last seven days are any indicator based on my experience so far, we will all be better off. I am not talking about disabling your accounts or eliminating social media all together. What I am suggesting is removing these from your life for 30 days. Now that is a challenge that I think we can all get behind that does not involve milk crates or Tide pods. Can you do it?
