A year without Facebook: three reasons why you can’t avoid it
My news feed was well curated. I’ve spent quite amount of time adjusting it to show only the most relevant content for me. Then I started noticing I spend too much time reading news and articles on Facebook. It kept me well informed on a daily basis, but I felt I should read books instead. I removed myself from the Facebook and I was away for an entire year and some more.
Every once in a while, I would miss Facebook, not in a nostalgic, but rather practical reasons:
1. I was missing important life events of close friends
These are not the closest friends, but pretty close ones. I had no idea what’s going on with their lives until I hear it from someone in the real world. Important life events such as marriage, childbirth, moving to another country or city, new job, and birthdays of course too, are usually meant to be seen on Facebook, and often never mentioned in the real world.
2. I lost touch with many people
There are people I have so much in common. We used to talk and hang out often, but all our online discussion was based on Facebook. I realized I didn’t have their phone number, nor email. Facebook was the only channel to talk to them. On a couple occasions I needed someone I just couldn’t reach, so I had to use our mutual friends to connect us again.
3. Facebook has the best news stream. Period.
The reason why I left Facebook in the first place started to hit back. From being over-updated, to less-than-average in my closest techie friends circle, I felt I’m really missing something out, (not in a FoMO way). I haven’t read more books, I just tried to find alternative ways to read news. After trying many other news curation apps, neither worked as well as Facebook’s news feed. These apps are usually overloaded with so much noise, that I’m missing the highlights.
A lot of things were changed or added on Facebook in the past year. You might not notice it, because you visit it often, but there are so many things that are new in my profile or home page, popups were everywhere pointing me to add new info, Pages are completely different too. I’m pleased to meet you Facebook again!
It seems that real world might be just an extension of the Facebook in some cases. Almost everything is happening there, and if you’re looking at the whole graph of the people you know, your world, no matter how large of a network you have, is just your small world.
