Photo courtesy of: http://www.socialnetworkingandyou.com/
I work in the realm of social media; naturally, I’ve had a presence on a number of sites for quite a few years. I joined Facebook in September 2006. I joined Twitter two years later, before quitting for a bit and then returning during my last year of school, in 2009.
Last week, thanks to someone who means a great deal to me, I realized that I was too reliant on social media. I had a high number of Facebook friends – and a lot of them were people I never talk to. Sure, I went to high school with them or knew them through friends of friends, but they weren’t people that I knew. I decided that it was important to do a Facebook “cull.” Using the criteria of “who would I call in an emergency,” I took a high number of friends (300+) and trimmed it down to around 130. While doing this, my Facebook account was deactivated and I was even tweeting less than usual. It was a mild social media detox that had me come back to things re-focused and, believe it or not, a little energized.
Facebook has a lot of personal details – and I’m working on removing those as well, to a point. But, at the end of the day, those extraneous people can connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn or through this blog. I think I even have a G+ account, but nobody uses that – it’s awful.
The world in 2012 is hyper-connected. We can text, tweet, Facebook, IM, BBM, and whatever else is out there to our heart’s content. But, does that constant messaging cheapen our in-person relationships? I didn’t think so, until somebody told me point blank that they felt I was neglecting them for social media. It hurt me that I was hurting them and made the change for them. Doing so led me to see the benefits for my own life, too.
While I’m back on Facebook, I won’t be accepting friend requests from just anybody and I won’t have the app on my iPhone anymore: I’ll check it every so often and use it to promote my blog posts and talk to friends who may be great distances away, but that’s it. Six years is a long commitment and it’s a little frightening that the first thing I’ve given that commitment to is a website. We can do better, world.
