A Year Without Facebook | First 24 hours

On December 31st 2015 at 11:59 pm, I signed out of Facebook, deleted the main app and Messenger off of my phone and I haven’t been back since.

As part of my new year resolution for 2016, I’ve decided to take a yearlong break from Facebook. It’s not due to privacy concerns, or anything about the platform itself, in fact it had become a very important hub for all of my communications with friends and family. It’s my own poor usage of it that has brought me to this decision.

I spend a lot of my time uselessly scrolling the feed, and I also use it to message people I’d otherwise never talk to; their green circle is a welcome sign to me to escape my loneliness or boredom. Facebook is an integral part of my life, but it has turned into an unhealthy escape from reality. I’m hoping that this break will actually bring me closer to the handful of real friends that I have, and also make me a more productive person. Facebook should not be an essential part of my life; I need to learn how to live without it.

But leaving is harder than I imagined. There is this innate, automatic programming in my head to go to Facebook whenever there is a lull in my time. My fingers have automatically reached for the spot it used to occupy on my home screen more times than I care to count today, and not having the tab pinned in the leftmost corner of my Chrome browser is disorienting. I found myself wondering how many notifications I had waiting for me or who was online for me to message and talk to throughout the day.

It’s really an addiction. It’s a drug that has become such a central part of my day, and I’m feeling the withdrawal so heavily. I haven’t even cut off my other social media, my Twitter and Instagram are both still active, but there is just something about Facebook that is irreplaceable and irresistible; the endlessly varied News Feed with articles, images, videos, links, GIFs, statuses and updates is unique to it. Not to mention Messenger, which is the most complete instant messaging platform I use, both in terms of features as well as users. My mother has already voiced her dismay about not being able to contact me via Messenger, I’ll have to find her a suitable alternative.

24 hours and 24 minutes later, I’m really missing the icons in my phone’s Social Media folder. I didn’t realize Facebook had such a deep pull on me. In an odd way, this daunting revelation is motivation for me to keep going and rid myself of this invisible rope Facebook has around my neck.