40 Days Without My Facebook News Feed
October 28, I decided to experiment with getting rid of the biggest distraction of the 21st century from my life: Facebook.
It hit me in the middle of the night that the mindless scrolling I started doing whenever I got bored didn’t deserve a place in my life of starting a startup. Before I went to bed, I decided to cut out Facebook for an entire month and see what I would be able to learn. Would I be disciplined enough? Would I fear missing out? I decided to give it a shot anyways.
Starting The Experiment
The next day, I realized I couldn’t cut out Facebook entirely from my daily workflow. My team and I relied heavily on Facebook Messenger and Groups. I concluded that I was to only get rid of the “distraction” part of Facebook, the News Feed.
With that set, I started creating workarounds for the Facebook features I needed.
- I installed the standalone Facebook Groups app right away and deleted the Facebook app from my phone.
- I already had Facebook Messenger on my phone so that was already out of the way.
- My notifications lived inside an RSS feed which I viewed entirely through Feedly.
- Current news and trends, also through Feedly. Since I focused more on tech news, I just subscribed to The Verge, Lifehacker, Springwise, and ReadWrite.
- My Facebook posts went through Buffer.
As for the web, I installed this cute little Chrome extension called the News Feed Eradicator, an app that got rid of my News Feed entirely and replaced it with productivity quotes.
Halfway through the experiment, my workarounds turned into becoming a pain as I had to jump from one app to another to do simple tasks such as posting updates on my wall or viewing my notifications about my groups.
I installed the Facebook app on my phone out of frustration, but still didn’t surrender from the experiment. I got into News Feed Preferences in the settings menu and used the “Unfollow People To Hide Their Posts” feature. I started tapping people, groups, and pages away until I was just left with a blank screen. I was using the feature too fast though that Facebook flagged it as “spam behavior”. It took a whole 3 days to finish as I had to be blocked from using the feature for a whole day, everyday.
After that, I was left with a fully working Facebook app with no News Feed.
What I Got Out Of The Experiment: Pros
It was funny when I realized how frequent I pulled out my phone during my daily commute, only to realize that I didn’t have Facebook to scroll through. Mindless moments of me scrolling through Facebook turned me to creating more productive and healthier “distractions”.
- Short train rides let me run through my Pocket reading list until I was left with a blank page.
- Long bus rides and drives were able to get me through my lineup of audiobooks and podcasts I promised myself I was going to listen to “when I had the time”.
- Inbox zero when you get bored. ‘Nuff said.
- I was able to give myself some alone time and caught up on books in coffee shops, something I called a luxury back then when I was still distracted.
- And lastly, with work out of the way earlier in the day, I was able to catch up on decent sleep.
Social-wise, it was an entirely different story. It felt more genuine being able to ask someone “how are you?” when you really don’t know how they are. Not like before when I was up to date with every person on my news feed, down to what they had for lunch or where they went last weekend.
What I Got Out Of The Experiment: Cons
Throughout the experiment, I learned that people relied too much of their sharing on Facebook. I was out of the loop when my cousin gave birth to a baby boy. I only knew a month later.
What was usually a sincere phone call to all your family members and a 2-hour drive out of town to welcome a new member in the family, “simplified” through a 30-second post on Facebook. Hooray for technology.
Also, new distractions started popping up in my workflow.
- YouTube. Feel free to block it with the Focus app for Mac. In my defense, I consumed news through here as well. And cooking shows. And videos on Fallout 4.
- TV shows. I consider this a good thing for me, considering I’m finally halfway through the first season of Game of Thrones.
- Movies. Again, a good thing for me. Avengers: Age of Ultron. Just last week. Yeah.
I used to blame work for distracting me from catching up on movies and TV shows. Now I know who’s really to blame.
Final Thoughts
I first planned on going through this for just an entire month. 40 days later, I realized that I could actually live without my News Feed. Weighing everything out, I still considered myself to be “more productive” after getting rid of my distractions.
I feel more genuine as a person as well, free from the facade of having a thousand friends when you can’t even call a couple to go out and have a couple beers. I’m out of the loop more often, yes. But at least I know who actually cares enough to contact me when they want to talk or hang out.
Would I go back to my news feed? Maybe, but not anytime soon. I can get used to this news feed-free lifestyle.
I was inspired to write about my experience by David Rainoshek, MA and his post on How Facebook is Altering Your Mind and Joe Murfin and his post on How Facebook Is Stealing Your Time. Brave souls. Can’t wait for our Facebook accounts to get deactivated.
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