For Lent I Gave Up Facebook

As much as I love social media and all its benefits (there are some I can rattle off if you’re not convinced) I wondered… what would happen if I gave up the Facebook app on the iPhone for 40 days?

I’m not by any means religious, nor do I have anything against religion, I just am a Scully kind of a girl. But one thing that I have liked doing over the past couple years is practicing a loose form of Lent. A couple years ago I gave up shopping in a series I call Shopstinance. This year I decided to give up the Facebook app on my phone. Those who know me know that I spend a lot of time on Facebook, so I just wanted to see what my life might look like if I didn’t.

The Rules

  • Delete the app from the phone.
  • There will be no re-downloading the app.
  • No need to delete the account, because I didn’t want fraudsters taking over my identity and phishing my friends.
  • I could still access Facebook whenever I was in front of a computer and felt the need.
  • I could still post to Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

The Selfie Complex

Once I deleted the app, I needed a replacement on my home screen, which I decided would be Snapchat.

Home

Every time I wanted to instinctively check Facebook out of reflex I instead took a selfie. Oh god all the selfies and oh those bathroom selfies you’ll never see, just kidding… well maybe, you’ll never know. These are just a few not from the bathroom.

At first I over tweeted.

But then after day 3, I started reading, texting friends, going out on dates, cleaning out my garage, helping clean a friend’s place, indoor rock climbing, mountain biking, snowshoeing (I loved this so much), finished all the house projects I promised myself I’d do five years ago, saw friends I hadn’t caught up with in a long time, cooked, and discovering more of California.

New favorite activity!

The truth is… It wasn’t all that hard to be without Facebook and there are so many other things I found myself able to focus on instead of who got married, divorced, had a baby, traveled somewhere awesome, and hated Trump, etc.

Now that I’m done with the challenge, I learned a couple things. Not having Facebook on my phone made me take a lot more selfies, and now I’m super vain! Ok not really. But this was kind of a change as I generally don’t like having photos taken of myself.

What I really learned was, I didn’t really miss Facebook all that much. I missed saying happy birthday to some folks, which I do feel a bit guilty about because to me birthdays are important, but overall it was really liberating. I had a lot more time to do things that were on my bucket list instead of reading rants about life or politics. I did miss getting recommendations from friends on cool articles to read, or places to go, but overall I didn’t really feel that much of a loss. Additionally I found myself reaching out to contact all the people who are important to me on other mediums of communication, whether it be on chat, Twitter, Instagram or through text messaging. Instead of living vicariously virtually through other people, I had more time to live my life.

I guess I didn’t love Facebook as much as I thought, I don’t really feel a need to install it on my phone again. But if you’re missing me on the book of faces, feel free to reach out because I don’t check it all that much anymore.

Now time for more of those royal throne selfies. God I love Snapchat.

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