I don't proofread my posts before I publish them... cause I keep my thoughts au naturale.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

My 24 hour #Facebook deactivation experiment

Now, this is not a tale of woe, but it may sound like I'm hosting a pity party and that you are invited.  This is more an eye-opening experiment that I conducted that I wanted to share the results.

How hard or easy would this be for you?
Yesterday was my birthday.  As you all know, Facebook reminds everyone daily of which of their friends is having a birthday that day.  Several months ago (maybe almost a year) I took a weed whacker to my friends list.  It wasn't because I was mad or felt slighted in any way, it was because I didn't even know 80% of the people I was "friends" with.  I was trying to build a large friend base in order to promote my social media presence for this blog.  But I started to get frustrated with the fact that I couldn't share personal details or information because I didn't want strangers to know as much of my business as I was willing to share with the people I actually know and would publicly recognize as "friends" (although we all know that not all of our Facebook "friends" are people we really want as friends.)

So, I weed whacked it from probably 1500 to 95ish.  I've since added maybe 20 and started a Facebook page for this blog so I could keep the more personal things to just my "friends."  Now, back to the birthdays.  I'll let you in on a not so secret secret that I'm "friends" with some people who I would say hi to and maybe have a short chit chat.  So I don't tell everyone happy birthday even though Facebook tells me it is their birthday.  I do tell the people who I actually like and would probably hang out with if they asked me to.

So as part of my experiment, I deactivated my account on Tuesday night and planned to reactivate it this morning.  I wanted to see how many people would remember my birthday without Facebook telling them.  Now, if someone is only really "friends" with me because of Facebook, I don't fault them for not knowing, because they wouldn't even have any way to tell me aside from Facebook.  But there are people who have my number or follow me/friend me on other social networking sites. 

And guess what... TWO PEOPLE.  Yes, TWO PEOPLE remembered my birthday (aside from the requisite cordial "happy birthday" from two of my siblings, but that doesn't count because we aren't even friends on Facebook- plus they have it easy in remembering because it's our mom's birthday too.)  So, a whole TWO PEOPLE that I consider friends remembered my birthday and texted me to tell me.  Sorry to one person who doesn't count because my husband pointed it out to her the day before and she didn't know.  I do appreciate it though because she offered to watch my kids so I could do something... but I didn't.  Instead I cried myself to sleep at 8pm and had frozen chicken nuggets for dinner.

The experiment taught me a lesson on friendship, but also taught me that although it was a task, I was able to go a day without Facebook.  The only thing I missed was during downtime when I was trying to get one of the kids to sleep or when I was waiting at an appointment, I would usually kill time seeing if anything interesting was going on with anyone or sharing memes.  Other than that, I didn't miss it at all!  I think I could easily do without my personal account, but it's a nice way to kill time.  I don't even really stalk anyone, so that is another reason it would be easy for me to do away with.

In case anyone wants to respond, here's a prompt: what do you use Facebook for the most?  How long do you think you could go without it?

1 comment:

  1. I actually have it set to remind me a week ahead of birthdays but I am having wonky wifi and so lately I have been 2-3 weeks behind... I prolly have 3 dozen people that will be getting belated birthday wishes from me. Speaking of... Happy Birthday!

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