I’d say I’m a pretty active user of Facebook. I admit to accessing it far too much. It’s always there open in a tab on my laptop or pushing notifications to me via the app on my phone.
I hit a point over my New Year break where I was scrolling through updates from local cafes, events I wasn’t even going to, organisations I’d liked to get free Wi-Fi, places I’d followed because I was visiting the town or country. Then I realised I didn’t need to see this shit.
It was all just noise. Distractions.
Here I was though, eagerly scrolling through it all seeking a tiny nugget of something useful.
And, want me to be truthful?
There was nothing of worth in there.
From that moment on I decided to assess each post to see whether it:
- was relevant
- was useful to me now
- brought me joy
If it didn’t, I went to the organisation’s page and removed my ‘like’ and ‘follow’.
Pretty soon my news feed was emptying out. This was addictive. I went through my ‘likes’ list and deliberately culled more.
It started to show me how little actually goes on in my friend’s news feeds – especially when I deliberately blocked posts/pages they shared that I didn’t agree with or I found distasteful.
I haven’t removed any friends from my list. But I have deliberately unfollowed some. Noise is reducing. This is making me feel better.
But God, Facebook is a dull place where nothing ever happens!
I know it will creep up again. Invariably, I’ll follow organisations as I plan new trips away. But I’m going to try and be mindful after the trip is done and remove links I no longer need*.
I thought it was interesting that merely days after taking the decision to do this, Mark Zuckerberg announced a change to the Facebook news feed which does exactly what I’d been doing manually! Posts from organisations and pages are being downgraded in the news feed in favour of personal interactions from friends and family.
Damn you Zuckerberg, I could have saved hours! To be fair though, deleting stuff feels good.
Facebook-lite – give it a go!
*This does not apply to Knoxville posts – my day would be empty without bacon/biscuit/breakfast posts from Pete’s Restaurant!
minimalistmonth 