Facebook: Being Disconnected

For the past several years I have been a heavy user of Facebook. It makes it so easy to communicate, interact, and keep in touch with all of your friends' lives, however, it is something that also was consuming a lot of my time. One day when I was bored I decided to do some math to calculate how much of my life was being wasted on the social media service. This is what I came up with:

     If I spend just 1 hour a day on Facebook then I am spending 15 days back-to back on Facebook a year

     If I spend 2 hours a day on Facebook, then I am spending 1 MONTH of time back-to-back on it a year

You may be thinking, "There is now way that I spend 2 hours of my time on Facebook a day!" but a lot of you might just be in denial. First, think about how many hours you spend in class a week. Most people spend about 4 hours a day in class. Out of that time in class how much of it are you on Facebook? I'm guessing you probably spend at least an hour out of your 4 hours of class time on it, and some days even more than that.

Now think about how much time you spend out of class on it. You go to the library to study and the first thing you do is check your Facebook feed and wall. You spend a few more minutes stalking specific friends. You may even use Facebook chat for a little bit. Then during your studies you take a few breaks to check your Facebook. Then before leaving the library you check Facebook again. An hour can easily be wasted just in the library.

During the day you are constantly checking your Facebook App on your smartphone. This will easily add up to maybe 15 to 30 minutes a day. If you are at some meeting, or with a group of people you might even be on your phone checking it during those times as well.

You now have some free time, what do you do? You get on Facebook again. Then at the end of the day before you go to bed you check it again, just to make sure that no one has commented on anything. Is this pattern starting to sound familiar? If this story matches your life, you easily spend at LEAST 2 hours a day on Facebook on average. That means that ONE MONTH OF YOUR YEAR IS SPENT ON FACEBOOK, which in the end would be 1/12 of your total life if you keep up with the same patterns.

I recently read an article that spoke of a new study on Facebook. The study claimed that Facebook is more addicting than smoking and alcohol. In response to the article I decided to test that theory and delete my Facebook account to see how addicted to it I am. It turns out that it is harder than I thought. It has now been 8 days, and I am about to cave. I want to get back on and see what has been going on in my digital world. I want to browse through all of the photos that people have uploaded. I want to chat with my friends. I want to read everyone's status updates and check to see if I got any event invites. It's so freakin' hard to resist the temptation to reactivate my account. 

Today has been the hardest day so far, I really just want to reactivate it. It's only 10 AM and I am still considering doing it. I am going to hold out though, just to see if I can do it. Who knows, maybe I can go another week. Only time will tell.