It is now going on week two of my Facebook fast.
Week one felt much like I would expect a detox to feel. With a spare two minutes of down time my mind would instant whir back to Facebook and I would be drawn to my phone to check it.
But sine I deactivated my account and deleted the app, I had nowhere to go. I had to reroute a new habit, a new pattern.
So I replaced it with other apps that are still stimulating and habitual but not to the same intensity.
My new pattern is, check my Etsy app? Any views lately? No/Yes (cool!). Now check my blog analytics for any views/activity. Same thing. A small dopamine rush- or lack thereof- and I am off the app and on with my day.
No hypothalamus overload of people and their birthdays and their bad days. I don't look up from my phone to my kid with my brain bogged down or temporarily distracted by information that I really don't need. It really is just too much and my anxiety rises because of it.
So the less I am on it, the less stressed I am. I breathe more fully, I think more clearly, I focus on my kids more easily. And that's the way it should be, right?
I don't use social media to market my blog and probably never will. But I do still consider it a tool. I can still search for people that I want to search with. I can still sell my stuff on Marketplace (even with my account deactivated since I still use Messenger). I can still explore pages for things that I am actively seeking information for.
BUT I am not mindlessly scrolling through Facebook in the after hours, waiting for valueless entertainment or drama. Oh. My. Hell. The drama. I don't miss it.
It feels quite liberating, actually.
You should try it.
Another unexpected side effect is having a clearer mind. When you go without, you can literally feel your brain start to rewire. You feel less mental exhaustion throughout the day. You are no longer bogged down with everyone' else's celebrations, successes, failures, bad days. You don't have to absorb or process aspects- whether they be negative or positive- of other people's lives.
When I took my fast and finally got through the first two weeks, it actually got a lot easier to stay off. I will admit that I would go on for very brief "peaks".
It allowed me to have more meaningful relationships with those that I really cared about. I wasn't spread thin from throwing out half-assed comments here and there. Those that I chose to have contact with, through messenger, got the the real me.
Sometimes when I do need a short something to read for my mind to chew on I read the world news instead. This might sound pretentious but I feel like a new, enlightened, slightly more intelligent me.