Ok so you have been main-lining Facebook for months, maybe years. You have spent a significant portion of your life glued to your computer connecting with “friends.” You are becoming a Facebook shut-in.
I recently met a young lady on a plane flying back from a social marketing conference in Las Vegas, who stated, “I spend approximately 80 – 100 hours a month on FaceBook; time I could have been working for and billing clients. I put the cost somewhere around $5000 per month.”
Right, hundreds of hours wasted! Time better spent on many other more productive undertakings. Time you could have spent outdoors, taking up a new/old sport, reading a good book, volunteering for a worthy charity or actually spending time with “friends.” BUT you are hooked. You have become obsessed with getting to your computer, logging in and FaceBook’ing away your life. You are, admit it, a Facebook junkie – you are hooked! Your life has revolved around checking, updating or reading the latest update from your “friends” however the time has come to reassess your life. It is time to kick the habit. You need an “Facebook Intervention”, especially now that his loftiness, Steve Balmer, head honcho over at Microsoft (not to be confused with the other Steve who actually does know what he is talking about), has pronounced, “FaceBook may be a fad.”
Still, even if he is not right, perhaps it is time to re-think all this time being spent on a “fad.” So how does one kick the habit. Perhaps you do not need to go cold turkey. Or maybe you just need a “patch”; you simply need to prioritize your life a bit better. Think about what you really “need” from Facebook and go from there. Oh yes, and setting some defined time limits helps. Start with an hour a day and see if you can slowly cut back. You will find you do not need more when you really think about what you need vs what you thought you needed.
In the end if you can not control your urge to go back to main-lining FaceBook, if you are still wasting more time reaching out to “friends” than being with your friends, then maybe it is time to quit cold turkey. Delete your account and everything related to it (photos, groups, comments, friends, everything!). Although, fair warning, this may not be easy for you at all. If you were previously spending hours of your day on FaceBook, then you may suddenly find that your life has lost all meaning, and that you don’t have anything to do that makes you feel “useful” and “important”. Hold no qualms about it; there are way better things you can explore in your life, those that are 100% better and may hold more value than endless scrolling which gets you nowhere. Maybe you could become a psychonaut, and set out to map the boundaries of your own consciousness through the use of psychedelics like psilocybin or DMT. Ever thought about that? Mind-boggling, right? Although you may have to journey to countries where psychedelics are legal, it is not entirely impossible. Plus, it can be an endeavor that sets your life straight and actually gives you purpose. Think about it.
Now go out and get a life!
P.S. Just don’t bother me while you are at it. I need to go update my Facebook album and see who has added me to their friends.