Over the last few years I found myself increasing my time on Facebook to around 2-3hrs a day, mostly talking to a few people that I hadn't seen in quite a while, posting updates and the odd picture. Now while this seems very normal usage of Facebook, it caused me to think about breaking down my day, just logging down how much time I was spending on Facebook. I'm a busy parent, and hold down a great career so how did I find the time to sit at a computer and be so non-productive.
What surprised me was the amount of message sending I was doing, upto 45mins a day sending messages from either my phone or computer; mostly the handset, so that didn't even come into my thought process of using Facebook. Humm so almost 4 hours a day then, using the Facebook. That's a whooping 1460hrs a year "wasted", sounds pretty anti social that.1460hrs is about the time it would take me to :-
Walk to Iran and back - I know I just checked.
Learn 100 different languages - I know, I just checked.
Build 21 2100sq ft houses - I know, I just checked.
So if I exchange Facebook for my time back, what could I achieve ? What am I missing out on, which is the exact reason many use Facebook, to quench their thirst for "missing out".
Back in December I deleted my Facebook account, I didn't warn anyone, no clue, just a raw delete; just to see what happened, well the results surprised me. Firstly those who I really didn't need to contact, didn't get in touch - if I wasn't offering the information on Facebook many didn't really seem interested which was fine. Humans seem to like obtaining easy information; not be challenged by the difficult - who walked round to someones house to ask them out for a beer when they could use the phone instead, nobody. The biggest pain point for me was talking to people overseas - I have many family and friends who live in the US and UK but that was replaced with WhatsApp or Google Hangouts. So I lost the ability to communicate with some that in real honestly I didn't care much about, and found a way to communicate with those close to me, and that went the other way round too.
One thing that surprised me was the amount of people that got put out that I had deleted Facebook assuming I had removed them as a friend - One actually didn't reach out to me until I sent her a text asking how she was, she replied "I thought you were ignoring me now" hummm since when did Facebook became the ONLY method of communication ? Text, a call, a whatsapp - anything other than a Facebook message would have done, but this was overlooked. Have we become that lazy ?
The feeling of not sharing all my SMS and handset information with Facebook felt good too. No snooping, no wondering who is using the information I send, to create adverts for me.
One big part of the big Facebook delete was getting all those hours back, I found I had more time for my family; more time to learn to do new things - I recently learned how to Scuba Dive to a high level. I also have got involved with more business opportunities too. Less time for people I don't care about, and more time to enjoy getting out more. Did Facebook alone prevent me from doing all of this ?! Well there is an argument for that to say otherwise but you cant deny 1460hrs is an immense amount of time to reintroduce into your life.I think the same can apply for any social media that people seem hellbent on self branding themselves, or collecting friends.
Deleting Facebook I'm sure isn't for everyone but in the quest for not being left out of other peoples lives, is very much in exchange of missing out on your own life.
Go on delete Facebook, I dare you.