I have made a decision to try disconnecting from social media.  I have noticed with using both Twitter (although very little since I started with FB) and with using FB, that most of the other ways that I used to stay connected have fallen by the wayside.  My productivity has fallen as I am spending more and more time on FB.  My husband and I watch TV together and we both read FB at the same time.  We go out and I have said to him more than once, can you get your nose out of FB!  He has looked at me in exasperation when we need to go somewhere or do something and I say “oh just finishing this FB thing”.  It must stop.  How can someone be so connected via social media and still so DISCONNECTED in real life?

I think it can be very fun to get the up to minute status updates of your friends and family, but I have also noticed that less and less actual communication occurs as more and more status stuff happens.  With many of these new locator apps, folks don’t even need to do a status update. They can just click a button and it updates to the entire world their exact location via GPS and satellite.  Talk about being on an electronic tether.  Do you ever think about how EVERYONE knows what you are doing all the time?  It has been said that you can control what you put on social media.  Although this is true to a certain extent, the real addiction is that to truly experience social media as it is designed to be you are involved all the time.  You become an open book, with your “knickers” so to speak hanging out there!!!

I realized that I don’t like this.  I want my private stuff private, and my personal things for friends and family for them, and my public things for others on my blog.  I wish to control my media.  FB has repeatedly changed their privacy settings so that I need to continually check to make sure that my private stuff is still private.  I have had to turn on the notifications that I have specifically set for various people and businesses back on repeatedly because FB turned them off yet again.  The amount of times that I have had to specifically turn back the notifications for my OWN HUSBAND because FB shut them off escapes me because of the sheer number of times I have had to do this.

It has been said to not punish those that do wish to stay connected with me because of FB bad behavior.  If I can not control FB, which no one can even control their own profile and you are delusion if you think you can, than my only way to “rebel” against the liberties FB takes with my information and photos is to DELETE FB and NOT engage.  THAT IS THE REAL CHOICE.  FB has said that it is free and will always be free.  They are giving special priority to those updates that folks PAY to have boosted.  My views on my Fan page plummeted when FB started that procedure.  My friends will update their status with a comment and photo and I will see the comment but can’t see the photo even when I go to their profile page and LOOK for it.

All of this is frustrating.  It creates tension.  It creates negative energy.  It creates time wasting as you search for ways to get that information back that you had before and FB took away.  Have you ever tried to search for something that you posted on your own timeline a year or so back and couldn’t remember the exact date?  Good luck trying to find it.  It is so much easier to look for it in my blog or my calendar.

I don’t have time to spin, weave and dye fibers because I am on FB.  I don’t even watch any of my TV shows or a DVD with hubby because I am on FB.  I don’t hang out and walk the dogs like I want to (OK in all fairness that is a lot to do with being eaten alive by skeeters more than FB right now).  I don’t make cheese, soap, lotion or even cook the way that I want to because I keep getting sucked into FB. I am going to return to real life, ranch life, holistic therapies, fiber arts and just breathing.

Have you noticed how FB and FaceBook have now become both a verb and noun.  REALLY?

I haven’t deleted either my FB or my Twitter account, but I will not be posting or tweeting. I will not check them and I will be sharing my adventures here, or by phone/text, letters the old fashioned way with paper and pen, or……shock horror….FACE TO FACE!!!

*I reserve the right to change my mind if I find that I can’t live without FB and am freaking out.  This is why I am not deleting the account right this minute.  But FB be aware, the writing is on the wall!!*