Facebook Independence Day

I was addicted to Facebook. I hope you won’t judge me, but for many years I would follow every post and every share by all of my Facebook friends. Through Facebook’s many iterations, I would make sure to sort by “Most Recent” posts so that everything was in order. Then I would scroll back to the last place I had left off, moving forward in time on the timeline until I made it to the present. Sometimes that meant a lot of time scrolling. On my lunch hour, I would play catchup for the few hours or posts that I had missed. After long hours of driving in the car or being otherwise occupied, I would have to sometimes set aside an hour or more to get caught up. After showering every morning, I would scroll back to where I had left off the night before.

Yes, I spent a lot of time looking at Facebook, but it did have some advantages. People post a lot about their lives. I would always know who was doing what and who was going where and what was going on in people’s lives. I knew who had died. I knew who had gotten married or gotten into (or out of) relationships. I knew when people were having good times and bad. Every day I wished all my “friends” happy birthday. I liked many posts and photos.

This often annoyed my wife. Here’s a typical exchange:

Me: “Did you know that Bob and Jan are dating?”
Her: “How do you know Bob?”
Me: “Well, I don’t really know him, but we had a lot of mutual friends. One of us friend requested the other at some point.”
Her: “Why are you friends if you don’t even know them in real life?”
Me: “Well…it helps get the word out when I share things for work…”

That was true to a degree. The other advantage of my Facebook use was that I also knew everything that was going on in the community. I told myself that I also needed to befriend a lot of people to share my organization’s information too.

Over the years I often wondered if it was worth it, but I didn’t wonder to the point of actually changing my habits. Of course, Facebook made some changes now and then that sometimes made it tougher to sort by the most recent posts. It didn’t stop me. There were even some occasional bugs or errors that would briefly interrupt the ability to sort the posts at all.

In the last couple of years, my view of Facebook shifted. I’m not really worried about my viewing habits or demographic information being shared, but reports of Mark Zuckerberg lying to Congress or Facebook’s role in spreading misinformation didn’t help. Leading up the last election and since then I would often find myself getting angry reading posts. I’m not one that is easily stressed, but I was often stressed reading Facebook. Facebook just wasn’t fun anymore.

Then last month, Facebook’s “Most Recent” post feature stopped working. This time, the error didn’t just last a few hours. It lasted a few days. Without a way to follow posts in the way that I was used to, I tried to make do by viewing “Top Posts”, but it wasn’t the same. Those three days were enough for me to break out of my habit even when the “Most Recent” posts feature returned. With COVID, Black Lives Matter, and the debate about masks, every time I tried to use Facebook again, I would just get angry again. The balance had shifted and it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

While it’s true that Facebook is a good way to stay connected to family or people that you might have lost touch with, it’s also true that Facebook’s real goal is to make money. That’s why they continue questionable practices and haven’t taken the real steps necessary to curtail misinformation or promote facts. I realize that Facebook isn’t interested in me having fun as long as people are interacting, even if it’s in negative ways. I just don’t need that negativity in my life. Of course, Facebook does continue to be one of the top ways to get information out. You have to have a personal profile in order to post on a business account, so there’s no easy way to really give it up. Aside from those posts, though, I don’t plan to be on there.

That’s why I’m here instead. I’ll post the witty comments or interesting pics that I would have posted on there to a much smaller audience here. You’ll get my Goodreads book reviews. And you can likely expect to get links to some great YouTube content if I ever get around to uploading anything. My family will know where to find me for the important stuff. I would say that I’m sorry if you miss my likes or my happy birthdays, but I know that you probably won’t notice. In any case, it’s great not to be angry. It’s also great to have all of that time back, and Independence Day seemed fitting to make the move official.