When you search for this article in Google, you'll find many angry rebuttals, such as this one. I haven't taken the time to read the whole thing, but it's probably worth doing, and I'll bookmark it for later. But the major point I took away from the article is that actually Facebook really is a waste of my time. I've blocked so many people from showing up in my newsfeed due to over-posting or because they're wholly uninteresting, and yet when I log on, I still very rarely learn about anything Earth shattering. Yes, the occasional picture of friends, family, or a new baby are worth seeing. And also, I gain some interesting tidbits about people's major life events, but on the whole I log on much too often, and I spend valuable time reading details (several of them!) about what people ate, where they are at that specific moment, who they're with, and what they're doing. I am one of the guiltiest of them all. I won't deny it. In the last couple of years, I've really shied away from posting anything on FB, but that was not the case circa. 2009. I've now grown out of wanting to impose every detail of my life on my fellow Facebookers, and I wonder why I ever felt compelled to do so. Why does anyone think that they're so interesting that others should want to follow their every move? It's definitely a generational thing, but not exclusively.
When I was in Cuba last year, I took an eight-day break from the Internet. And the phone. It really was the best, most freeing time of my entire life. I reluctantly turned on my phone upon returning to Miami and spent the next hour deleting (and unsubscribing) from emails. I took Facebook off my phone, and did everything I could to simplify things. I felt so out of place being back in the real world, and not in a good way. It was a 100 times more difficult to adjust back to what I had formerly known than it was to abandon social media and all the constant distractions from my handheld device when I first arrived in Havana. Now that it's been several months, I am of course back in the swing of things and have been for some time. But I still feel some personal dissonance when I log onto Facebook. It's a compulsion that cannot be stopped, and yet it is the hugest waste of my time. So for the time being I've deactivated my account. I think that means that my name still appears in your friends list and some other stuff, but mostly I am off the FB. It's not a final, definitive thing. I can always get back on, but I hope that I don't want to, and then I will permanently delete my account.
With all of my bad-mouthing about Facebook, a person could wonder how I could feel okay about narcissistically blogging my life away, as if anybody actually cares what I'm doing at all times. Well if you didn't care, you wouldn't be here, I suppose. Mostly I blog for me, because I like to write and I like to have a diary of my life. I wish every person that I deemed to be interesting would also write a blog. It involves so much more than just posting a selfie on Facebook and tagging your friends at your location. It provides such a better experience to your audience than that. And I'm not shunning all social media. You can still find me all over Pinterest and Instagram. But as far as sharing on Facebook about every time I go somewhere neat, hang out with someone cool, or do something attention-worthy, well, those days are behind me. Because I'm not anymore interesting than the next person, and I'll do you the courtesy of not imposing these details on you unless you want to visit my blog.
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