Some people just hate Facebook, don¤t have an account and are
determined to never create one. Some people love it, use it all the
time for chatting, playing games, etc. I always thought, I was
somewhere in the middle between these extremes, but in November 2014
I discovered that I spend too much of my time hanging on this
so called social network.
Similar thing happened to me years ago. I came to the college in 2003
and there was a free unlimited Internet connection. In following
years I spent most of my time chatting on IRC. I have been connecting
to the IRCnet network since 1999, but with the price of dial-up I was
happy, when I could be online few hours per week. On college I wasn't
limited by my wallet and there were some days, when I didn't leave
my room, except for getting something to eat and going to WC.
I didn't want to repeat it with Facebook, but I didn't want to delete
my account either, because it's still the best way of contacting some
people. So I decided to limit my Facebook presence to a hour every
week, every Wednesday from 20:00 to 23:00 CET (the Facebook hour
starts when I manage to get to the computer, but within this window).
If I'm unable to get to the computer, I have another option on Friday
but this is an exclusive or, so it's either Wednesday or Friday, not
both.
I deleted Facebook clients from all my devices to get rid of annoying
notifications and so far this schedule works for me - one hour
is more than enough to reply to messages, see what's new and still
it's too short time period to fall in unnecessary chatting. After two
months I have to say, I'm surprised how little I'm missing. And even
more surprised by the free time I now have. No, I am certainly not
going back.
