Lent without Facebook

For Lent this year, I’m trying something different: I’m giving up Facebook. If we’re friends over there, you might end up seeing things from me because of things like Buffer or IFTTT, but I won’t be logging in or checking anything there. The app’s off my iPad (it hasn’t been on my phone for a long time), the site is blocked on my mobile devices, and I’m logging out of this right after posting this.

This is entirely about how Facebook actually feels to use for me. I get a lot of value out of it. I have a lot of real-world friends on there, and I’m in more groups than I would’ve thought, some of which are used to coordinate real-world events that I care about. But I also kinda mostly dislike it. It often feels like work, or like an obligation. And, honestly, like something of an addiction. I can feel the dopamine hit when I get good reactions to things I posted, and I feel the compulsion to check for that. It’s more than the absent-minded checking, which has its own issues but doesn’t really bother me that much.

I’m on most other social networks too, and, for whatever reasons, they don’t feel that way to me.

See you on Sundays, maybe, or after Easter. Probably.