blogging facebook goals life in Japan: delete facebook facebook productivity time management
by sendaiben
9 comments
So long, and thanks for all the likes
This isn’t the first time I have walked away from Facebook, or at least tried to. Unlike this essay, I don’t think the internet is the best place to live your life.
There is a lot to like (ha ha) about Facebook. It does provide a community, something that is particularly important here in Japan as it can get lonely otherwise. It allows you to keep up with people that you don’t see often and probably wouldn’t think to call or email.
In its pure form, I would probably have kept my account. However, Facebook has made a number of important changes recently that really degraded the experience for me:
- not showing all my friends’ posts
- not showing things in chronological order and bringing posts back to the top every time someone likes or comments on them
- showing things my friends like or comment on
- showing ads that have some tenuous link to a friend
- not showing all posts from pages or communities
- not sending posts from pages to more than 10% of the community without payment
- co-operating with the NSA
- the new microphone listen function on phones
Facebook is also a time-suck, and was starting to get in the way of things I would rather be working on. At the end of the day I get much more pleasure out of writing something on this blog, or an article, or reading a book, or meeting someone for coffee than by hanging out on Facebook.
I’m going to keep my account for now (for the pages) but I have unfriended everyone except my wife and don’t plan to use the account in a personal capacity again. We’ll see how long I last this time 😉
How about you? How do you view your Facebook usage?
Yes, it’s definitely a less enjoyable experience recently. Now, where’s the agree button?
I love Facebook. I use it for both work and pleasure. Although it is a time suck, it is also a nice break away from the things I have to do. It is helped me reconnect with old friends and make new ones. I also find it useful for keeping a track on my students and for them to message me questions or information when needed. Facebook is now like coffee for me. I also use it for friendly banter; the kind of banter I sorely missing living away from home.
I feel the same way as Andy. And Ben. I love it, I hate it. I’ve walked away twice, deleted a myriad of friends three times; always to come crawling back. It’s where I release of my stress of being in charge at work.
[…] decided to stop using Facebook in a personal capacity a couple of weeks ago. I have various pages on there that I didn’t want to lose access to, so […]
I think like you Ben, it was such an easy way to keep in touch for abroad and I started my account when I moved to Bermuda to post photos etc. I was pretty sure even my closest friends would bore of sunny beach photos every week by email. Now I feel it is out of date as I can face time or iMessage everyone just as easily. In a way I keep it just so my wider circle feel they can keep in touch. But I feel the end is near as I delete everything from my wall and write nothing of importance there. Now twitter, that’s another story…