The 1st of April 2018 has been in my sights for a few weeks now; it is the day I finally quit Facebook forever.
There’s not much to say about this decision. For a couple of years now I have been procrastinating about quitting social media, or at the very least severely curbing my use of it.
So, I decided that enough was enough. I have been spending far too much time sitting at my computer, mindlessly trawling through my timeline and staring at a screen filled with the same old shit.
Except for Instagram, I deleted all social media apps from my phone. This was partly down to the immense amount of battery life they consumed, but mostly it was because of the constant notifications that were appearing. I turned off those notification features, but it was all too easy to open one of the apps, just to see what was happening in the world. They had to go.
Too many times in the past I have jumped off of Facebook, but only ever temporarily. I chose just to deactivate my account, rather than hit delete. Today though, I took the plunge.
For the first time in a long, long time, I had no reason to take my smartphone out with me. I didn’t need anything it could offer, aside from being able to make a phone call. Instead, I set up a call divert feature and took my Punkt dumb-phone out with me instead. I didn’t have to look at it once.
I’m going to keep my Twitter account active, although I will not be using it unless I need to find something out quickly or send a direct message to a follower or a company that I follow. I’ve changed the settings on that account to make it private and have done the same thing with my Instagram account.
The next phase of my digital spring clean will be to quit watching the news, either on TV or via the internet. I’m not burying my head in the sand; I’m just trying to see what difference it makes to me on a daily basis. I have a feeling that I will have more time to focus on getting healthy and spending quality time with family and friends.
I honestly believe that news and social media in the digital age have conspired to make me into a grumpy old curmudgeon. Well, enough of that shit, here’s to the new me!
Until next time, adieu.