Unfollowing 500 People/Pages On Facebook. All You Need To Know.
What happens when you take on a social(media) experiment. Thank-you Reddit.
Like many other millennials, who are tired of Facebook, I tried quitting Facebook too. A dozen of times. It was always temporary though. I kept going back to it somehow. Though lesser each time.
Then I tried other means. Uninstalled the app. But then I started using the browser more often.
Simply pressing “f” in the URL bar brings Facebook up.
Exactly. Fuck! It was always easy to go online and log in or something or the else.
I had to something radical that would change my whole Facebook experience.
Then I started questioning the WHY. Why do I want to quit Facebook?
ø Wastes a lot of my time.
ø Doesn’t give me any relevant data.
These are very good two reasons. I thought about them a lot. And the root of both of these reasons lay in the fact that I have around 700 “friends” on Facebook and I followed more than 200 Pages.
If I was to lessen the use of Facebook, I had to reduce noise.
Enter, Unfollow.
I unfollowed more than 500 People and Pages. Not unfriend or unlike.
Unfollow.
That’s the magical word you’re looking for.
Unfriending people on Facebook can have a negative impact. You want to clean your Facebook feed here, not dismiss people from your “online friendship”.
Same applies for Pages. You might not wanna “unlike” them. You’re trying to be picky about what arrives in your feed from now. Not that you now suddenly dislike everything you have liked for the past years you’ve been on Facebook.
I’m an IT fella myself. Don’t get me wrong. I do understand that apps/websites are specifically designed to hook the user to it. Heck, I do it myself. But I needed to take back my time from scrolling endlessly and without intent, to spending some really short quality time on Facebook.
How do we do it.
Since I had already uninstalled the app, I don’t know how to do it from the app. And if you’re willing to do this, you shouldn’t really have the app itself in the first place.
At the top right of the web page on facebook.com, you see a small triangular dropdown button. Click that.
Now click “News Feed Preferences”
Now click “Unfollow People”.
Once you click that, you’ll notice that there’s another dropdown. Finally, we have arrived.
You have to painstakingly select each friend or page and mark them to unfollow. And while doing this, a few good things will happen:
Ø You’ll actually take time to think which of your “friends” matter to you.
Ø You’ll want to go ahead and “unfriend” the ones that you barely know. Or maybe don’t know at all.
Ø You’ll feel you’re finally cleaning your room that you’ve been spending so much time in.
What happens then?
Now that we’re done with the WHY and HOW. Let’s get to the THEN.
I’ll have to classify this as a two-part “then”, since the initial effects were quite different from the ones that followed after.
Initial Effects:
- So much free time. My Facebooking was cut down from a 45 minutes a day to merely 10 minutes a day! This led to so much free time! Imagine 35 mins daily. EXTRA. FREE! I’m honing my writing skills and music research in that time. And I love that!
- Since I wasn’t seeing anything on the news feed I didn’t want to, I was happy to see the feeds from people that actually matter to me.
- The feed finished way earlier. I saw posts repeating, or the ones that I have seen earlier, realising that I have reached the end of the scroll.
- Friends started asking why I’m not tagging them in memes anymore. I took time to explain this thing to them. They were supportive. Very. And I also let them know that they don’t necessarily have to do the same. They can keep tagging me in the ones they like. :)
Later, Later Effects:
- When people sorta realised that I am not all over Facebook anymore, they made sure they personally messaged me about the things that they meant to share with me. It felt so nice! People will actually come forth and tell you in a personal message that they went to some nice cafe and they loved the food there, and suggest you to visit there too. Or maybe there was this very cute dog video that was so sweet to receive.
People that want to reach out to you, will always do. - I made a few amends to the list of friends/pages I unfollowed as per my interaction with them in the time before. You get to quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. Filtering is very easy then.
- Now when I go to places, I actually feel like sharing it with people that matter to me. It’s like, you are spreading your love more intentionally and directionally. Just making sure, it is reaching the people I care about most.
- Someone actually noticed that I don’t like their posts now as often as I did before. I told them honestly that I have chosen not to follow them on Facebook, as the interaction outside Facebook is more than enough for me. And I cherish it. And well, they’re kinda glad about it. They said that they’re happier that our connection is stronger than they thought it was.
Your Takeaway
- If you’ve been planning to do this since quite a while and haven’t yet gotten around to do it since you didn’t exactly know how to do it, well, now you do.
- Life outside Facebook is far more colourful and stimulating. You’re addicted to the “how things look” through facebook. Outside of it, there is enough “how things feel”. Don’t settle for the surface.
- And lastly, stop becoming just another data-point in someone’s database where all they want to do, is exploit you and show you advertisements, so that they can gain some money off you.
I’ll be in the comments if you’d like a chat. Or you can leave a private note. :) If you want to check out what I did with my time I saved off Facebook, you can see some good music thoughts on songoftheweek and a poetry book I’m proud of, March’s 31 Emotions.
Before you leave,
I want you to know that I appreciate every minute of your life you spent reading this. Time is not money. It’s worth can’t be quantified. Amen!
