Weaning myself from Facebook

I am down with a head cold and two major deadlines to meet at the end of this week. I can’t afford to be distracted so it’s a good thing I have learned to fast from Facebook. And what a difference it has made in my productivity.

I have not given up FB altogether, but I no longer go to the site the moment I wake up and every time I am idly holding my iPhone. I no longer feel the need to respond to everything I disagree with. I no longer post something then wait to see how many liked it or commented on it. And I no longer take my iPad to bed with me at night.

If I sound like I need the 12 steps to get away from FB, it would probably have gone to that, had not a friend, upon learning that I had trouble sleeping, suggested that I get off FB for at least 24 hours. I did so right away and I surprised myself when, after 24 hours, I found I could go all the way to 48. When I went back online, I realized that nothing had changed. The haters were still there. The compulsive posters still recorded everything they did in a day. The Facebook universe had revolved for 48 hours without me and I didn’t miss a thing! That was when I knew I could live with much less of it.

Since then, everything on my to-do list has gotten done. Bills are paid on time. Emails are answered. Articles are edited and packaged. The March edition of the magazine I’m producing will make it before the end of the month. And the family book for my late Dad’s 100th birth anniversary will be launched when we sing Happy Birthday for him on March 28.

I am also more sanguine, less angry about nay-sayers, less irritated about what’s going on in the country and the world. While I am still very much concerned about finding the truth about Mamasapano and passing the Bangsamoro Basic Law, the difference is, I no longer regularly see the toxic remarks by haters, mercenaries and smart alecks who litter Facebook with half-truths and outright lies. I still read the news online but it is not like before when my reading list was distilled by the tastes and biases of other FB users.

I am actually totally wired with iPhone, iPad, laptop and an office desktop. I would go to Facebook on my iPhone in the car going to work and in the office between meetings, on my laptop at home between writing and editing, and on my iPad when I went to bed. My office computer has no Internet access. I would switch off my reading lamp and catch up on who was saying what online, hoping to fall asleep in the process. Wrong! I didn’t realize until I was hooked that the back-lighted iPad screen could keep me awake forever. I did read — on Facebook — that being online at bedtime is the worst possible antidote for insomnia.

To be sure, Facebook has been a great tool for making and finding long-lost friends, remembering birthdays, getting information, making announcements, testing ideas, convincing others, crowdsourcing, and reading very interesting articles by good bloggers.  However, it is also the repository of a lot of useless junk and toxic hate and there is nobody who vets what should stay and what should be thrown out.  

The Internet is such an efficient communication tool, I often wonder how we ever connected in the past when rotary-dialed phones with snooping party-lines and snail mail were the way to go.  How did we coordinate group activities? How did we find out what movies were showing and where? How did we know what time a restaurant opened and make a reservation? How did we purchase concert and airline tickets?  And how did we research for our term papers?

Today, we can find a classmate from elementary who lives in Alaska or Mogadishu by searching for her online. Any song, poem or story we learned as children can be accessed. The word “encyclopedic” for the amount of knowledge or information anyone is capable of has become obsolete.  There are no limits to what cyberspace has opened up for humankind.

But I can only take so much information. I do not need to know everything about everything. I don’t have to be connected to everyone at once. I still like the feel and the scent of printer’s ink on newsprint. I prefer to read a book by flipping pages by hand. I still take down notes with ball pen on notebook. And I like receiving letters written in long-hand. However, I share a house with young people who mostly live in cyberworld and whose facility with gadgetry I find difficult to comprehend, but they find things out and get things done for me online.  So through them, I embrace the Internet and don’t complain. Last night, when someone asked at table, how to use the word “albeit”, two of them grabbed their iPhones and in seconds had its origin, definition and usage! Impressive. 

I really can’t get out of Facebook since most of my family is on it and there’s no better way to be connected. But I’ve weaned myself from it enough to visit less and less each day just to see what’s going on.