Disconnected
A few years ago, before I disabled my Facebook account entirely, I turned off all notification emails, uninstalled the Facebook app, and taught myself not to automatically type in "facebook.com" in my browser's address bar whenever I got bored with the work I was doing on the computer. The latter one was the most challenging, since this was a habit that had been ingrained for several years.
I heard someone once joked that "I don't even have a Facebook account!" is the new "I don't even own a TV!" It's the mark of the self-righteous person who has chosen to liberate themselves from the technology of the lowest common denominator, and who has to derive their sense of self-worth from telling everyone else around them about how grand it is that they've liberated themselves from it, while insinuating that all other people should follow their example.
I'm not one to lecture; I'm merely one to share my own story. I learned that Facebook, like television, is something that is best consumed with portion control. Instead of eating the ice cream right out of the carton, for example, you spoon out the amount you want into a bowl and eat out of the bowl. I'm not a dietician, but knowing my own eating habits tells me that this tactic makes it far less likely that I'm going to glance down 15 minutes later, and find myself staring at an empty carton and sticky spoon, realizing that I've somehow eaten the whole carton.
As they say: moderation.
So I stopped going to the television to kill an indeterminate amount of time. Instead of looking for a new television series that would entertain me until I fell asleep, I started setting aside blocks of time in which I would watch something to mentally unwind, then step away to do something else. Of course, this works so long as the television series isn't one with dangling cliffhangers at the end of each episode that hook into your brain and pull you along into the next one.
Remember when Netflix didn't have the "auto-play the next episode" for TV shows? Remember when people used to complain about this? I remember complaining about it. Now that each TV show I put on is a slippery slope of wasted time, I have to wonder: was this really ever a problem?
Anyhoo. Where was I? Ah, so a few years ago, I disconnected my email inbox from all social networking messaging. I removed the notifications from the mobile apps I left installed. Nothing from the platform would pull me into social media, save for my own impulses. For this reason, social media was trickier to disconnect from. This was partly because I got into Facebook when I had just moved across the country to a city where I didn't know a single soul except for my girlfriend, and I didn't have the requisite social skills to walk outside and talk to strangers. Any ersatz social connection was better than none. I eventually made friends offline, but this didn't ease the difficulty of recusing myself from the social media...old habits and all that.
I even found that my habit of working with my email inbox constantly open in a browser tab was distracting. I now leave this closed most of the time. When I have it open, most of the emails I'm getting from vendors sending me marketing junk skip my inbox and go to filters I've set up. If my inbox alerts me to a new email, it's most likely a human and not a robot.
I've been living this way, mostly disconnected from the immediate demands of technology, for the last couple of years. It has been liberating, but I believe it has also been responsible for some bouts of loneliness that I felt while I was adjusting. It's not a really a huge surprise, but after years of engaging in social media, there were withdrawal symptoms. I had to face the wrath of #FOMO, and to borrow from Homer Simpson, there was no place where people could hear my various witty remarks. (Their loss, of course.)
Taking this step probably isn't for everyone. There have been long-term drawbacks. I don't keep my phone on me at all times, and even when I do, I'll often ignore it when I'm with other people, so I'll be unresponsive to text messages from my friends to what might be considered, by modern standards, a fault. Even offline, conversations tend to crop up in my social circles about things that happened online, so sometimes I'm that one person that needs to be shown the video that everyone else already saw on Facebook so I have context for the rest of some conversation.
But overall, comparing the two, I'd say that living without social media having its claws in my mind is much more enjoyable. I'd suggest that anyone who's wired in all the time take the 30 minutes or so right now, and set up disconnection from social media or technology, as much as your vocation might comfortably permit.
Don't put this off...try it right now. Try it for a day or, better yet, a week. If you can't bear the pain of #fomo, rest assured that social media will happily welcome you back with open arms. It's the place where everybody knows your name.
I heard someone once joked that "I don't even have a Facebook account!" is the new "I don't even own a TV!" It's the mark of the self-righteous person who has chosen to liberate themselves from the technology of the lowest common denominator, and who has to derive their sense of self-worth from telling everyone else around them about how grand it is that they've liberated themselves from it, while insinuating that all other people should follow their example.
I'm not one to lecture; I'm merely one to share my own story. I learned that Facebook, like television, is something that is best consumed with portion control. Instead of eating the ice cream right out of the carton, for example, you spoon out the amount you want into a bowl and eat out of the bowl. I'm not a dietician, but knowing my own eating habits tells me that this tactic makes it far less likely that I'm going to glance down 15 minutes later, and find myself staring at an empty carton and sticky spoon, realizing that I've somehow eaten the whole carton.
As they say: moderation.
So I stopped going to the television to kill an indeterminate amount of time. Instead of looking for a new television series that would entertain me until I fell asleep, I started setting aside blocks of time in which I would watch something to mentally unwind, then step away to do something else. Of course, this works so long as the television series isn't one with dangling cliffhangers at the end of each episode that hook into your brain and pull you along into the next one.
Remember when Netflix didn't have the "auto-play the next episode" for TV shows? Remember when people used to complain about this? I remember complaining about it. Now that each TV show I put on is a slippery slope of wasted time, I have to wonder: was this really ever a problem?
Anyhoo. Where was I? Ah, so a few years ago, I disconnected my email inbox from all social networking messaging. I removed the notifications from the mobile apps I left installed. Nothing from the platform would pull me into social media, save for my own impulses. For this reason, social media was trickier to disconnect from. This was partly because I got into Facebook when I had just moved across the country to a city where I didn't know a single soul except for my girlfriend, and I didn't have the requisite social skills to walk outside and talk to strangers. Any ersatz social connection was better than none. I eventually made friends offline, but this didn't ease the difficulty of recusing myself from the social media...old habits and all that.
I even found that my habit of working with my email inbox constantly open in a browser tab was distracting. I now leave this closed most of the time. When I have it open, most of the emails I'm getting from vendors sending me marketing junk skip my inbox and go to filters I've set up. If my inbox alerts me to a new email, it's most likely a human and not a robot.
I've been living this way, mostly disconnected from the immediate demands of technology, for the last couple of years. It has been liberating, but I believe it has also been responsible for some bouts of loneliness that I felt while I was adjusting. It's not a really a huge surprise, but after years of engaging in social media, there were withdrawal symptoms. I had to face the wrath of #FOMO, and to borrow from Homer Simpson, there was no place where people could hear my various witty remarks. (Their loss, of course.)
Taking this step probably isn't for everyone. There have been long-term drawbacks. I don't keep my phone on me at all times, and even when I do, I'll often ignore it when I'm with other people, so I'll be unresponsive to text messages from my friends to what might be considered, by modern standards, a fault. Even offline, conversations tend to crop up in my social circles about things that happened online, so sometimes I'm that one person that needs to be shown the video that everyone else already saw on Facebook so I have context for the rest of some conversation.
But overall, comparing the two, I'd say that living without social media having its claws in my mind is much more enjoyable. I'd suggest that anyone who's wired in all the time take the 30 minutes or so right now, and set up disconnection from social media or technology, as much as your vocation might comfortably permit.
Don't put this off...try it right now. Try it for a day or, better yet, a week. If you can't bear the pain of #fomo, rest assured that social media will happily welcome you back with open arms. It's the place where everybody knows your name.