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By Joel Sieh, Contributor
Facebook is stealing your time and attention and replacing it with a false sense of human connection. How many hours do you spend endlessly scrolling Facebook? What else could you be doing with that time?
When I was a kid, I'd watch cartoons on TV after school. Sometimes I'd watch them for a couple hours, from 2:30 on to 5:00 or later. There were definitely some smart and funny shows in that lineup, and Animaniacs in particular sticks out in my memory. However, most of what I watched was pretty forgettable.
One day, while lounging in my dad's La-Z-Boy, mostly entranced, I noticed something. A restless part of me whispered to the person watching that screen: "Why are you wasting all this time?" I thought for a second, and I realized that I was spending hours doing nothing but consuming media, and pretty mediocre media at that. And I was doing it every day. Not only that, but paying attention for that brief moment to my physical senses, I realized my body actually felt bad doing it.
I stood up out of the chair and exclaimed, "Ugh! I can't do this anymore!" My siblings' eyebrows raised and they stared at me, but I didn't elaborate. Instead, I walked out of that room and away from the TV. I didn’t completely quit watching cartoons that day, but I did seriously cut back, and I stopped binge-watching my afternoons away.
Facebook's Decline
When I started on Facebook years ago, I joined up to connect with all the friends I'd not seen since High School. For the first years, I had a feed full of content from them, and I'd occasionally contribute. There were fun thoughts and pictures, and generally I enjoyed interacting on the platform. Sometimes I'd post a short article about competing in a local Mario Kart tournament or my experiences moving back to Michigan, and I think people enjoyed my contributions.
Eventually, feed algorithms changed and people posted less, or maybe the feed just wasn't showing me their posts. Facebook showed me lots of other content: low-effort chain-letter-style questions meant to harvest security question data, dumb memes, ads, and political stuff that just made me angry.
I stopped contributing. I'd still scroll, though, looking for pics from my friends, or anything I cared about. Most of the time, I came up empty. I held onto it, however, just in case. After all, what did it hurt?
This is what I am calling the "Mentally Disconnected" stage of Facebook usage. I was basically done with the social network, but I couldn't bring myself to actually delete the app. There were many times I almost deleted it. I certainly wanted to.
These thoughts kept it on my phone:
- What if I miss something good?
- What if I want to contact so-and-so? This is my only connection to them!
- What about Facebook Marketplace? That's useful!
- What about all the pics and other things I've posted? I don't want to lose them!
- Ugh, even if I do disconnect, I have to go through the process of downloading all the stuff I posted! What a pain!
I stayed tied to Facebook for years. And although it took me a long time to realize it, my listless browsing of the platform started to feel a lot like watching those endless hours of cartoons in the 90s. It didn't just feel the same, either: it was wasting my time in the same way, sucking away minutes and hours on the consumption of low-quality content.
Earlier this year, I decided to finally delete Facebook.
If you're in that "Mentally Disconnected" stage that I was in and want to break out of Facebook's time suck, keep reading. Here's what I did—and the wonderful experiences that came from it.
Breaking Out
I didn't just up and delete Facebook one day, because of those questions listed above. I needed to find an answer to each.
Step 1: Keeping Hold of My Friends
I posted a general message on my Facebook timeline that said, "I'm leaving Facebook in the next couple weeks! If you want to keep in touch with me, please reach out and we can share contact info!"
Some folks reached out, including a few I didn't expect. I chatted with each and we shared contact info.
Next, I looked through my friends list and made a list of everyone I cared about or thought was cool. These were the people I wanted to keep in touch with. I contacted each of them over Facebook Messenger and told them what was up with me, and how I wanted their contact info.
This is where things started to get interesting: most of the people I reached out to chatted back with me. We had great conversations about the recent events in our lives. I collected emails and phone numbers, and even scheduled some lunch meetings. In one case, I ended up talking to an old friend about Dungeons & Dragons, and now we're playing in a group together!
Step 2: Giving up on the Fear of Missing Out
I had to come to grips with the fact that I'd miss out on some pictures of friends on vacations, and other fun things. Those had become so infrequent, however, that by this point, it wasn't that difficult. Besides, now that I had collected actual contact info, when I talked to these friends in the future we'd have more to talk about.
Step 3: Downloading My Data
I didn't want to lose my old pictures or those articles I wrote. Thankfully, Facebook has a method to download all that stuff into a package on your computer. You can find steps on how to do that here:
https://www.facebook.com/help/212802592074644/ .
If that doesn't work, search online for: "How to download all my Facebook content"
The key takeaway here is that it's not that hard, especially if you have instructions (see that link above). It takes a few days for Facebook to create the download package, but they'll send you a message when it's ready.
Step 4: Deleting my Account
Steps for deleting your Facebook account can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674/
If that doesn't work, search online for: "How to delete my facebook account."
Facebook gives you 30 days to change your mind, so you have a while to figure out if you can't live without it.
Facebook Free Living
Once in a while I think about Facebook and have the urge to check it out again. It's gone out of my life, so I can't without signing back up.
Each time I think about it, I'm struck by how glad I am that I ditched it. I now use that time in other ways: I plan out my D&D game, I play a board game with the kids, I work on an art project, or I write an article for a local paper.
Think of the activities you used to do before Facebook. Don't you miss them? Yeah, life is busy right now, but Facebook is eating up all those little spare moments, and it adds up.
Instead of browsing Facebook, you can take up that creative project again. You can plant a garden, go for a walk, or join a community organization. There are so many options.
You, too, can reclaim your time.
- First, make real connections with the people you care about who are still in the Mentally Disconnected stage of Facebook.
- Step two is letting go of that fear of missing out.
- Lastly, download your data and delete your account.
It’s that easy.
Photo of Maxine Waters by Jacob Freeze from Malibu licensed under CC BY 4.0 /modified from original
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