So, I’ve been frustrated about the amount of time I spend on Facebook. I’ve tried taking hiatuses and breaks, and I think the longest I went without logging in to the thing was 36 days at the beginning of this year. I always seem to find some excuse to go back on there.
I’ve been on that thing for 13 years, sometimes spending over an hour a day on there. I don’t totally blame myself. The thing is evil now it wasn’t always that way. It isn’t just about what I can tell that it’s done to my brain chemistry or how it’s influenced the way I interact with others (at least on there), it’s also what I’ve noticed about what it does to others. I’ll be fine without it after a few weeks, but I’m genuinely worried about everybody else. I’m not even talking about Cambridge Analytica or ownership of my data which are important too, I mean more like the “dopamine feedback loop” stuff. More on that from a former Facebook executive. This article is a couple of years old, but this problem has not gone away.
I’ll start with a year off and see how I feel about the place then. I’m not going to deactivate or delete the thing; civilization is breaking down out there and it might be a good idea to keep that channel available. Or a bad idea, I don’t know.
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Today’s links:
An article from Our World In Data on social media use and well being.
A John Green article in the Washington Post from January of 2019 about his year off from social media altogether one month into it.
and his reflections on on it November of 2019 in on vlog brothers.
