#14: Take a Facebook break
Facebook is basically my main way to waste time. And after finishing this post I am going to follow-through and deactivate for a week, probably for the duration of Passover. It's just mostly useless to me and maybe you're feeling the same way.
There are just so many other things to do with your time that will benefit your mental health and keep your mind more actively working. You can actually do work for school and not make the claim that you don't have time for that school stuff because you find yourself procrastinating too much, You can work on improving some aspect of your life. I have made a few suggestions throughout this blog. If you take your Facebook time and use it to do anything else, your mind won't be going to waste and you will be all around a happier person.
But you say Facebook is your only way of staying connected to people? I say that's complete bullshit unless you have really close friends who are living in foreign countries or studying abroad. I have a few of those but I'm pretty sure they can live without a Facebook chat once in a while. If you just use Facebook chat to communicate with people, I bet you have their phone number. So, hey, hit them up on the phone or send them a nice text message.
Oh, you get most of your daily fix of news from your friends' Facebook posts? That's nice and convenient but you can get your news fix in other ways. Read articles online. HuffPost, NYTimes, NYDailyNews...pretty much all newspapers have digital versions nowadays, Or you can turn on a 24-hour news channel like CNN. Or maybe even read a paper newspaper and indulge yourself in a dying tradition.
Maybe Facebook isn't really your technology addiction. Maybe you have a problem with your smart phone. So, I advise using it only for phone calls and text messages for a week and see how that goes. Or maybe you're addicted to television. Set a specific amount of time to watch, limiting your time wasting time and giving you more hours to be productive.
Just try it for a week. And you might find yourself using that technology craze less in the future. How did our parents and grandparents live so happily? They didn't have personal computers or cell phones. They didn't have the internet to answer their questions. One theory is that people were happier without technology leading their lives. I don't know much about the theory and am not a professional, but if you try it out you can see for yourself if this theory is true.
Wish me luck on my Facebook withdrawal. Hopefully I will be more productive in school and more productive in my all around life.
And I hope you find this helps you cope better...
Happy coping!
By the way, this post just reminded me of the unfortunate news I heard about on the news: World Britannica is not printing anymore paper volumes. This makes me sad because I remember when I was a kid and finding the most fascinating facts while searching through those volumes. What a shame technology has won that battle. Tech: 1. Pre-tech: 0.
