About a year ago, I ran into one of my old friends from high school. We had been friends on Facebook before I left for good three years ago. He asked how my family and I were doing. I told him we were doing well, very good actually. I reciprocated the question to him.
He answered, then immediately segued to Facebook as a topic of conversation, and said, “I know why you left and I can understand. All the talk about politics.”
I didn’t correct him. But that’s not why I left. I grew up in a very conservative place — politically and religiously. So, I’m used to not agreeing with pretty much anything everyone around me believes or says, including friends and family. But we’re still cool. I would give them the shirt off my back and I know they’d do the same for me. (And no, I don’t identify as a liberal simply because I’m not conservative.)
The real reason I left Facebook was for a very simple reason. It had nothing to do with politics, religion, staged family photos, fake outrage, drama, vitriol, or cynicism.
As a parent of two young kids, I found it a terrible waste of my time. Even if it was only a fraction of my time spent in the day, I felt it was time squandered I’d never get back with my own family. Fifteen minutes a day (at a minimum) is an hour and forty five minutes of my life in a single week. And no one who has Facebook spends only fifteen minutes a day on the platform.
That was the real reason I left Facebook.
And it was that simple.
(Twitter was a different story. Twitter is little more than a dumpster fire where everyone brings sticks, marshmallows, and chocolate bars. And, I don’t like s’mores.)
Most everyone I know who left Facebook did so for a similar reason. The reason can be that simple: how can I better spend the limited amount of time in this life with the people I love sitting right in front of me?
Don’t make it more complex than it is. It’s not worth it. Facebook is a form of virtual reality. Not reality. Recognize this simple truth.
Photo by dole777 on Unsplash
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