For the longest time, I was obsessed with Facebook and I couldn’t get enough of it. I would wake up each morning and immediately open the app and I went to bed each night with my thumb scrolling my feed. I was a proper fiend, addicted to sharing my life as much as I was addicted to reading about others. I loved Facebook so much I could have been their mascot, but one day I decided to delete my account and I’ve never looked back. Here’s why:
- I shared stuff that should NOT have been shared. In real life, I have no filter on the things I should and shouldn’t tell people. I was the same on Facebook. Private or not, I shared it. My Nan really enjoyed reading all about the BEST sex of my life. Facebook is probably the worst site ever for people with so little self-control.
- Everyone knew everything about me. Whenever I ran into someone and they asked how I was doing, I’d start to respond but they’d interrupt me with, “Oh yeah, I saw that on Facebook.” It always put an awkward end to the conversation, to say the least. I suddenly realized that I had nothing to talk about because everyone already knew everything since I’d shared it on Facebook.
- I moved home and no one cared. I moved to the other side of the country for about five years, so you can imagine how excited I was to finally go home and see all of my high school friends. I thought they’d be so excited to learn I was back and super interested in hearing all about my adventures while I was living away. Spoiler alert: they weren’t. I told Facebook I was returning home, so by the time I saw my old friends, the thrill was kind of gone.
- Everyone got involved in my relationship. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on the guy I was dating. My friends (and even people who weren’t my friends) kept telling me that he was no good for me, he treated me like crap, he made me unhappy. I kept wondering how the hell they knew and I’d get angry at how judgmental they were being. Why couldn’t people mind their own business? It was only after we broke up and I trawled through my old posts on Facebook that I realized I shared EVERYTHING about our relationship. I’d made it their business. Ugh.
- I had to delete it for my job. I was working in the client service industry. I kept having clients, colleagues, and other related third parties try to friend request me. Sure, I could swerve having them as Facebook friends by setting my profile to private but they could still see my profile picture—the one with me holding a shot of tequila, braless and wearing a white t-shirt. I probably could have changed my profile pic, but I really did like that photo.
- I stopped enjoying the things I was doing. I made my friend put her fork down so I could stand on my chair and take a photo of our food before we ate it. I also spent hours taking the perfect action shot of our girls’ night out dancing. I would sit in the toilet of wherever I was trying to make sure I had the right filter and right caption so that everyone KNEW I was out with #mygirls because #girlsjustwanttohavefun. It was more important for me to appear as though I was having fun than to actually enjoy what I was doing. Like, how is spending more time on Facebook than the dance floor even fun?
- I spent WAY too much time on it, mostly stalking people. I’d sit down after dinner thinking, “I’ll just look at Facebook for a bit before I start studying.” Literally four hours later I would be on my friend’s friend’s teacher’s dog’s personal Facebook account. It was such a time waster. I knew more about people I didn’t even know then I did about my Business Studies.
- I used Facebook to judge people. I would stalk people I’d only vaguely met or people I was going to meet and form an opinion of them. I was super judgmental. It affected how I acted around them when I saw them. I didn’t even give them a chance to change my opinion. I totally made up my mind about them from Facebook.
- It made me feel crap about myself. I compared myself to not just my friends or acquaintances but also the people I followed. I kept thinking I wasn’t as well dressed, that I was fat or that my life was so boring in comparison to other people (Instagram is a killer for this too). I would put down my phone, sigh, and constantly feel bad about myself. I’m really glad I walked away from it in the end.
