Why I switched to Medium from Facebook
When I first created my FB account, over 10 years ago, I used to live in San Francisco and I was intrigued by the idea of connecting with my family and high school friends back home in Tunisia as there was no such thing as WhatsApp, Viber, and international phone cards were so expensive.
FB was a magical tool that kept me up to date with everything taking place back home, allowed me to share old photos and life updates
My FB usage was pretty normal as I checked my account few times a week, enough to stay up to date.
Then FB introduced groups, which I used to discover other users who shared my interests. Back in 2007–2008, I was very interested in Tunisian politics and mainly denouncing the way Tunisian authorities crushed dissent with an iron fist. As I found many partners in crime sharing my political views, my FB usage increased and I started using it daily. My FB political activities were mainly taking place in these closed groups and I kept my profile to stay in touch with friends and family. It was a balanced and healthy FB usage.
With the spark of the Tunisian revolution in December 2010, my FB usage took a new turn and became an obsession... I was connected all day long, refreshing my newsfeed obsessively, joining hundreds of groups and pages… It was a total madness!
Years go by and everyone, literally everyone, joined Facebook. I started receiving friend requests from total strangers and I accepted them… I quickly reached the 5000 friends limit and the number of followers kept on increasing to reach over 12k followers. I lost touch with old friends and family. My FB wall became a dump of political views ( mainly based on fake news ), trollers, bashing, selfies, religious posts, updates from spamming apps, etc…
My first reaction was to unfriend and unfollow strangers, leave the spamming groups and pages… Although, this cleaned up my FB wall a little but I wasn’t able to get my “old” FB back. My friends and family stopped giving updates on their lives and most of them became political analysts and a lesson givers. Checking my FB wall has became torturous.
Then I discovered Medium!
After creating my medium account, I had the “power” of choosing the topics and people to follow. I stayed away from politics and chose to follow smart authors that made me smarter every time I read them. My internet usage became saner and more balanced. The more I used Medium, the less I had to check my FB account.
Nonetheless, most of the articles I read are work related, which helped me get better professionally and unlike using FB, I don’t have to jeopardize work for Medium usage.
I am glad I made the switch!
