Within an hour of deactivating my Facebook account, I got a phone call. My sister. I don't expect to get more calls. I don't think most people, in the busy chaos of their feeds, notice. Maybe in a week they'll think "hey, what happened to Kate? I haven't seen a post in a while". Most likely not. It's OK. I've cut my friends list to the bone in the past, left FB for periods of time, and mostly it's unnoticed. Had a couple people notice after several months when they were cut. Had one person take about 3 years.
Thing is, FB gets overwhelming. The echo chamber gets LOUD. But now FB is worse, because I don't get to see a whole lot from my friends anyway, it's all sponsored posts. But worse than that, Reels are like crack to me. I could spend hours scrolling for thrift store hauls and tattoo videos. I DID spend hours a day doing that. Sometimes I didn't even remember picking up my phone.
Right now things are overwhelming for me. I think a lot of people are suffering because of economic pressures, and the weight of the news, and a lot of us seniors suffer from loneliness and depression. I personally, feel I have lost too much in recent months because of the ankle injury, not being able to hike or tide pool or even stand on my feet and teach all day. It feels like I've been forcefully stripped of my identity, and I've turned to FB to fill the gaping void in my life and to numb me from the pain of chronic health issues, living somewhere I don't want to live, and the loss of mobility/freedom.
Ultimately it does not make me feel better, it just fuels more need for more videos and cat memes.
I like to think that Facebook offers connections. I think it does to some degree, but also it feels more and more like an uncomfortable addiction and less like a tool to connect with people with whom I have some sort of relationship. The only part of FB that I spend any amount of time with that has directly benefitted me is Marketplace, although even that has become overwhelming and fraught with scams. As time goes by, it seems FB has become less and less like social media was originally: social, a place where you interacted with people with common interests or engaged in in depth discussions, and more a place where you interact with sponsored material.
I won't pretend that I'm anything other than an addict when it comes to FB. As such, I don't know for sure that I won't go back. So far my record has been 24 hours, which is pretty pathetic. I hope that I'll last longer, and that I'll turn to more productive pursuits with my time. Even blogging. At least here I'm not simply linking news stories and pasting memes. I'm talking. I'm not sure anyone is listening. But that's not something that's going to be remedied on FB.
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