Yes, Facebook makes me anxious and annoyed.
Near the end of last year a small miracle occurred: My Facebook newsfeed stopped working. I could still access the platform — see my profile and photos, see other people’s profiles and brand pages — but when I logged in I perpetually got the infuriating white-to-grey, I’m-thinking-about-loading animation that’s usually gone in a few seconds. And at first it was totally infuriating. I refreshed and refreshed with a growing sense of urgency.
When I told my friends my newsfeed was broken, they responded with a look of horror.
“That’s awful!”
“Yes!” But then, no, it wasn’t. It was liberating.
After a few days, I was free from the must-check-newsfeed tic every time I hopped on my phone or laptop. And once that feeling settled down, I noticed that I felt less anxiety in general, both online and off. A couple weeks in, I felt like I had more time in my day to do things that don’t involve the internets, particularly reading (books!) and talking with friends.
But alas, all good things must come to an end. As I removed myself as an administrator on more than 70 Facebook pages while I was transitioning from my last job, all of a sudden my newsfeed showed up again, like the hair whose color does not match my own that I pull from between my lips after consuming a forkful of salad. (Note to Facebook developers: The woman whom I added as the new admin to all those pages pinged me to let me know that her newsfeed had stopped working).
Although I resisted for a few days, I slowly fell back into the habit of checking, scrolling and eventually liking and even commenting again. And as I’ve done so, I’ve been paying attention to how I feel.
After about three minutes of newsfeed scanning, I find myself starting to tense up and get annoyed — annoyed at people who are, for the most part, friends that I care about (anywhere from kinda care about to really care about). And once I’ve registered that feeling, it only takes another minute before everything I see starts to bother me. Positive or negative, each piece of content feels like a bitter, disingenuous capsule that I’m forcing myself to swallow as a replacement for real connection.
I am not anti-social media or anti-Facebook. In fact, I’ve build most of my career on my ability to create powerful content and use it to connect people and build communities around the world. For people living with a chronic disease like cystic fibrosis, social networks are incredibly valuable for helping them feel less alone, for sharing stories and spreading inspiration.
But contrast that purpose-driven use of a platform like Facebook with the mindless scrolling that sucks the minutes and hours of a finite lifetime away. When I catch myself sighing and rolling my eyes at the endless posts, I frequently say to myself “Facebook is such a waste of time!” before closing the browser. My next step is to remind myself of that fact before I start to check for the latest status updates.
