Lets start with some pleasantries, happy new year everybody! I hope you had a fun, safe and memorable time celebrating and I hope you feel as confident and excited for 2017 as I do!
Today I'm here with a post on something I never thought I would be writing about, doing or even sticking to for that matter, in December 2016 I did a Facebook freeze, yes, me. I stopped using Facebook for 7 days, the world didn't stop, I didn't lose all the memes and I really surprised myself...
If you know me you will know I love social media, I think it's a great, great thing but I am more than aware there is a very dark side to it as well. A few weeks ago I had been speaking with my friend L as I was toying with the idea of coming off of Facebook although I never thought I could, or would actually do it, but anyway, I was speaking to L because as much as I LOVE the good side to social media, I was starting to be impacted by the negatives of social media on a day to day basis, my anxiety was through the roof (this was not entirely down to social media but I will say it wasn't in the least bit helpful, especially following mental health pages ectect, I just felt I was falling more into the trap of my anxiety and falling victim to it by allowing it to control me more than it ever has before), my anger levels were and still kind of are, really, really high, I have such limited patience and tolerance for stupidity, ignorant stupidity is what I really mean when I say stupidity, so having constant access to comment feeds where one will see lots of ignorant stupidity didn't help my general well being in that sense either and being the person I am, I always try and educate people where possible and it has taken me such a long time to realise the one and only place you cannot educate people, even with solid proven fact, is on a Facebook comment section. I started getting so depressed at not only the state of the world but also the lack of compassion and intelligent solutions for people in need, to say 2016 was a cruel year is an understatement, to bare witness to the absolute poison being pushed around by the media and by the general public on domains such as Facebook just made that statement 10 times worse.
If you think about it, we leave ourselves open to unsolicited opinions every, single, day but that's in real life where people aren't keyboard warriors, when we leave ourselves open to unsolicited opinions on social media were almost doubling our own dismay. Tailored news feeds,
comment section wars, continuous advertisement based on our search
history, its actually mental how little the majority of us know about social media itself, but what's even more mental is how much we know about others we follow on social media and how much
everyone else knows about us! Social media is an amazing tool but how we
use it isn't progressive, there are so many impressionable people on there and that is being taken advantage of by arsehole people, who use fear and hate to isolate groups of impressionable people from positive influences and we are all responsible to make an effort to make that positive change and to find a way to use social media to spread love and positive messages and show people that they do have a support network behind them whatever it is they're trying to achieve.
Facebook I find particularly archaic, there are A LOT of ignorant people on Facebook, there are a lot of racist people on Facebook, there are a lot of sexist people on Facebook, there are just a lot of people on Facebook who are so miserable in their own lives that they would shit on your day even though they don't know you just to try and bring you down to their level of unhappiness. I fall into the trap of coming to the rescue very, very easily so comment sections to me are like an addiction, I don't want to get involved, but I just cannot watch such ignorance and do nothing. This is the main reason I quit Facebook, that and the new internet privacy laws in the UK, thanks Theresa May, I hope my choice in clothes shops and porn is of interest or use to you in ensuring national security.
So one Wednesday, about 3-4 weeks ago now, I logged out of the Facebook app, deleted it and messenger off of my phone and vowed I wouldn't look at Facebook for 7 days. Not only did I actually stick to it (amazing, right), I really enjoyed it, my social media use on other platforms (Snapchat & Instagram) did go up but Instagram is one form of social media where the comment section is not the least bit tempting to me and Snapchat obviously doesn't have one! I didn't miss Facebook until the 6th day I was off of it and I don't even think I missed it, I just put my Christmas tree up and I was really proud of how cute it looked I just wanted to show it off (haha) annual habits and all that!
So the outcome of this 7 days away has been more monumental than I could have ever imagined and I am so, so happy, on the 7th day, I downloaded the app, I logged in, I checked my notifications, I only had 20 btw so believe me people wont be missing you that much, although I got a really sweet message from my friend G checking I was all good because she noticed I hadn't been posting, thanks G that really made me smile! I updated my status with information on how people can reach me, logged straight back out and deleted the app. I don't want it any more, I do still log in on Safari on my phone but since the whole 7 days without it I've only actually looked at it 3-4 times. I'm relieved that I feel free of this thing that in essence was a burden on me, constantly having news shoved in my face, opinions, rants, even positive influencers, its too much, I want quiet, I want peace, I want to find my own way, as Beyonce says, 'I'm known to walk alone but I'm alone for a reason', and although the next line in that verse is 'sending me a drink ain't appeasing, believe me' I like to take just the first half of that verse and remember this is my journey and my journey is my responsibility, I need to figure things out in a way that I comprehend, you absolutely can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink, I wanted to show you guys with this post that if you're looking to limit your social media use, it is possible, I used to be on Facebook every free second I had and now as I said, I don't miss it at all, it will still be useful for events, not forgetting peoples birthdays and getting my blogs out to an audience of people who are interested but I'm not sucked into it anymore and it feels amazing!
This is one change I have made that I absolutely want to maintain this year and the fact that I would never have imagined doing it makes me so excited about everything else I plan to achieve this year!
Happy 2017!
