Depending on how much you rely on Facebook for your social life, results may vary.
Facebook has been my one source of general news for the past few years. Other than the usual updates from friends and acquaintances over the years, I’ve followed newspapers, journals and magazines that I’ve considered to be reliable. I’ve stopped watching local TV, except for the occasional glimpse when I’m with the kids (ADULTS NOW!) and they’re watching one of the shows they like to watch just so they can to make fun of it.
Twitter on the other hand has been my source for news about my field and others on my field.
For anything else, I Reddit. That includes interesting writing prompts and jokes that I know my kids (ADULT CHILDREN!) will hate.
Lately, I have not enjoyed my time on Facebook and a recent relationship collapse has removed any inclination I have of checking what’s happening with people in my circle. As an experiment, I thought I’d see if removing Facebook out of my usual routine would be something I could do.
OK, a little caveat. I’m not really out completely since I still use messenger, although I have blocked a lot of people except for my children and parents and a few friends. I just deactivated the Facebook app itself so I won’t be checking my news feed and no one can see my profile. Also, since I manage a few business pages, I created a new account where I transferred admin privileges to, but that account doesn’t have any friends, so I can’t cheat and peek at anyone’s profile.
It has been 24 hours now since I’ve deactivated my account and I don’t think I’m missing anything. For the first few hours, I still tried to go to the Facebook site forgetting what I did, but once it shows the login page, I resist the urge to login and reactivate.
Last night, I spent a lot of time on Reddit, checking out writing prompts and a lot of science news I’ve missed. Something I read on /r/nosleep unsettled me and I ended up being awake until way past 3AM. I also got to the end of my twitter news feed without seeing any political or bullshit health advice from anyone.
Oh yeah, I also signed up for Tinder. But that’s a story for another day.
So far so good.
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