Three or four years ago a friend of mine requested that I join Facebook so that I could view photos of her kids. I set up an account, looked at her pictures, made a comment and walked away for about two years. A year and a half ago while we were in Singapore I started using my Facebook account a little more frequently to keep up with my friends back home. I added a profile picture and started accumulating "friends". As time went on more and more people from my grade school and high school years "found" me and requested to be added as friends. Some people are good at ignoring those "friend" requests. I'm too nice and didn't want to hurt feelings (plus I was a
little curious about what they looked like now and what they were up to) that fast forward 18 months and I was up to 260 "friends". I realized that it had ceased being something that was just for "fun" and was turning into yet one more thing that I had to do to keep up with everyone. It was the hardest and yet the most freeing thing I've done in awhile when I hit the "delete" button! I LOVE keeping up with my friends (especially my Singapore friends) and yet there were also so many people on there that I really don't need to keep up with or hear about their latest drama...don't I have enough of my own?? After a two week hiatus where I didn't post a status update and only checked what my friends were up to occasionally I decided that I could indeed live without Facebook. After 15 minutes of trying to figure out how to do it (FB doesn't make it easy!) I permanently deleted my account. I may sign up again in the future and keep my "friend" list to the ones that are truly my friends and that I want to keep up with but until then I'm back to the "old fashioned" way of e-mailing and calling:) It's a much more personal way to keep in touch with friends anyway and you get much deeper into what's going on in their lives than reading a status update.
PS:
According to Facebook they claim to have 400 million active users and the average user spends 55 minutes a day on FB...As of yesterday they have 399,999,999 million users and there is one ex-user who has 55 minutes more a day to concentrate on things that will last longer than FB anyway:)
5 comments:
I can definitely relate. About 2 1/2 years ago, I deleted my Facebook account. It was incredibly hard to do, but I've survived and been very thankful. :)
Someone is spending a lot of time on facebook, because I have gone to only a couple minutes 5-6 days a week. As long as you keep your blog I am happy.
Tina - my computer is up in my kitchen so I always had FB up - it was easy to hop on every once in awhile throughout the day to check up on statuses. Wasn't on a lot each time but figured each little amount added up by the end of the day.
Been praying for Lana, BTW...
NOOOOO! =) I was never on fb until we moved over here and then did it to keep up with people. And it has done that, but I'm friends with WAY to many people (also can't say no, or like you said wanted to get a brief update and then move on). I've ended up "hiding" a lot of my friends, so I see only the people that I care more about. And I have like 4 hundred and something. Some people have way to much drama and I haven't seen them in 12 years.
Anyways, good job, I don't think I can say goodbye yet, but it is a time waster.
400??? WOW! I thought I had a lot:) Guess you are a little more popular than me :P Enjoy having Joni there...Ryan and I always had fun showing friends and family around although it was a bummer when they had to leave...
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