About 8-9 months ago, I started to keep track of how much time I was spending on Facebook and was blown away to discover it was a ridiculous amount of time.
Funny thing is, it wasn’t spent on my personal page (I rarely share things), and it wasn’t uploading massive albums of pictures every other day.
It was scrolling through the main feed.
Trying to get past a ridiculous number of memes posted by 75% of the people on my friends list.
I haven’t ever been one to have it open on my phone ~ most days, I don’t even keep my phone closeby, I’m usually too busy to even have time to try to find it.
Granted we do have our own Facebook page for this blog, we have learned to cut back on our time ON Facebook to be more productive in other areas of our life – thanks to schedulers that help us schedule content, we really don’t have to be on facebook for days at a time in some cases. Sometimes even a full week.
Nine months ago, I used to always ask myself how people could possibly spend SO much time sharing content that really wasn’t valuable — I’m referencing memes, pictures with text, Buzz Feed Videos – it seems like those items get shared well before real quality content.
Although it is and can be a great place to connect with people, and let people know how your kids are doing with pictures, status updates & more – does it truly require a selfie every day? Does it require you photograph every meal and show your entire friends list what you are eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Do you really think people need to know what time you slept in until on Saturday morning?
I’m not going to say that people who spend tons of time on Facebook are wasting ridiculous time, but that’s because I’m going to try to be polite :) If you find yourself feeling like Facebook takes up a large amount of your day, then it’s really easy to pull the cord, cut back, and focus on other areas of your life that need you a little bit more.
1. Turn OFF email notifications and pushes
When someone posts a comment on your wall, you might have notifications sent to your phone – same goes for comments on a thread, or even a message. Turn OFF all those notifications OR change your settings so that you can moderate them through your email.
2. Be Intentional with your time
If you KNOW that every time you sit down, you end up logging in or, opening a browser window to check your Facebook, then don’t log in.
When you DO check Facebook, be intentional with your time. Sign in, make it brief, get off. It’s too easy to find yourself surfing through friends lists, photo albums, and even checking random pages of people you don’t even know when you sit on there too long.
3. Share content through blogs
In many cases, blogs will have share features at the top or bottom of their posts, that allow their content to be shared TO Facebook without logging in. Take advantage of that, and share their content from the source – give them the benefit of actually going to their site to read what they took the time to write, and if you find it encouraging, motivating or even inspirational, then hit “share”.
4. Close your browser windows
Make a vow to check Facebook once a day – for a 30 minute block at night before you go to bed… instead of logging in all day long. To do that, you will need to be disciplined to closing the browser instead of leaving Facebook open. It’s hard, yes, but it can be done.
If you can’t take any of these steps, consider stepping back from Facebook ~ make your account inactive and focus on your real life and real work. For a small (and we mean SMALL) percentage of Facebook users, it may not be addictive. But looking at Facebook as a whole, it’s easy to see that for most people it is.
And go a step further: before closing the window, log OFF Facebook – that extra step that you will have to do will not tempt you as easily to get back on.
5. If you are a Business/Blog use schedulers
It’s impossible to “not” be on Facebook when you have a professional page. If you do, then take 20 minutes daily to schedule content to your page for the upcoming week. Put your blinders on, and link up your content on your page on a regular schedule. You will find yourself less tempted to go on Facebook once you schedule your page a week at a time and believe it or not, you will find SO much more time to get things done that require greater attention.
6. Use the UNFOLLOW Feature
If you still want to keep friends, but those friends are the friends that are sharing endless selfies, memes and Candy Crush status updates, then simply use the unfollow feature to unfollow them – so you can keep the real “true” quality content in your feed.
This is monumental – it really does save a good chunk of your time. It’ll take you a night to pick out those friends that have a tendency to do that, but by unfollowing, you will find your feed is more relevant to what you NEED and want to see, instead of their latest dinner meal, Starbucks purchase or selfie. You can still “be” friends, but you really need to simplify your life.
Believe it or not, there is quite a lot of room for relationships with people outside of Facebook. If you spend the majority of your day on Facebook reading status updates, sharing memes every 10-15 minutes and playing Farmville games, then I think it’s time to go and find real community outside of your screen.
Get up, get off the social media site and turn to real social media — actually seeing and getting together with people outside of a screen. Join a meetup group, find a parents group near you, get out of the house and head to the library or the park, or just get OFF the computer entirely and find a REAL connection with someone that isn’t through a screen.