Thoughts on social media, bubbling to the surface...

I was not an 'early adopter of either Facebook or Twitter. But once I did join both of those services, I enjoyed them for a good long while. My approach to both evolved over time, but the enjoyment didn't diminish.

Until last year, that is.

Twitter was the first to go, last summer. And then, over Christmas break, I began to lose my taste for Facebook. I decided to take a break. Well. I'm the administrator on a group page, so I can't really take a 'full' break, but I took a break from posting on my own page, and endeavored to ignore my newsfeed as much as possible. A week into that, I realized how liberating that felt.

And then, I slowly started to untag myself from posts, remove photos, scale back the various 'about' sections, and, bit by bit, I deleted every post I'd ever made, from 2008 until the present.

And then I started culling my 'friends' list. At first I felt bad about that, but I realized, hey. Life is short. And while I wish it were otherwise, there are folks in this world who add more complication or pain or frustration or even simply a complete lack of communication to one's life than any of the positive things they might add. And these days? Well, I believe in focusing on what's good and true and honest and edifying, and if someone balances out to be a lot less of that, and a lot more of what's negative, I don't have time for that on social media. Offline may or may not be another story, but as far as social media goes, I need for it to cause less agita and to provide more enjoyment.

I'm still not posting over on Facebook, except for the page where I'm an admin. And I probably won't post more than one or two updates between now and the end of the semester. And I don't even miss it. It's been great. I didn't actually expect that. I thought I'd miss it more, but I think I'm starting to mull it all over and question my former approaches to it, and to start to formulate the approach I want to take going forward, when I end this 'Facebook fast'. We'll see how it goes.