After a chaotic first weekend with the new presidential administration, my stress and panic-induced Facebooking had reached a critical peak.
In what must be 10 years of using Facebook, never before have my emotions, behavior, and well-being been so entwined with my feed. Deleting the Facebook app from my phone was an easy and simple step towards freeing myself from the cycle of news, stress, and counter-productivity.
Deleting my Facebook app and instituting a Facebook time limit on my computer has been a long time coming, really. Research shows that the more time people spend on facebook, the more likely they are to be depressed. And that was exactly the correlation I was experiencing, amplified by current events in our country and around the world.
If you’re not ready to go cold-turkey, try the browser extension called “Stay Focusd”. It tracks and limits the amount of time you can spend on websites of your choosing. I’ve limited myself to 15 minutes of Facebook between the hours of 9:00 and 6:30. That leaves plenty of time before or after business hours to get my “fix”, catch up with the events of the day, and wind down with what I consider my personal form of television. Side note: I don’t have a TV and don’t do much streaming, so getting rid of Facebook was a pretty big deal.
While there’s always been an emotional motivation to this habit, such as FOMO or wanting to share an exciting event in life, I’d say the current political climate we’ve entered comes with heavier, more dangerous emotional baggage. Social media is our window to the world, and when the world is stressed out, we feel it too. While changing the world is hard, your habits and exposure to external stimuli are absolutely manageable.
Managing stress and unhealthy behaviors is so important to your ability to do your job, accomplish your goals, and grow as a person. While it may have taken a Donald Trump presidency to get me to change my own habits, I believe everybody can do it, and everybody will benefit from it. Your phone is still smart without the Facebook app, and the web version of Facebook works perfectly fine in any “emergencies” that may require you to look somebody up or check an event.
Taking a small step like deleting Facebook from your phone can lead to a huge awareness of just how much of your time has been programmed around an app, creating more room for you to thrive in your own environment. It’s been just one week, but a sense of liberation is felt with each and every acknowledgement that I am here right now, in this moment, and that nothing more important than that exists on my phone.
Do you find yourself checking your Facebook constantly? Have you ever looked at the app at the same time you’re looking at a Facebook tab on your computer? Is Facebook the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning, or the last before you fall asleep?
If you answered “yes” to any of these, I hope you’ll join me in my decision to drastically limit my access and time on Facebook.
This post is written by Cameron Pollock, SparkVision Research Director and committed student of self-care.
