Another Approach to Facebook
Most of my close friends by now have noticed I deactivated my Facebook for long periods of time, it's a sort of behavioral control. Since man is usually a reactive creature, it's hard to control our response to a relatively new social media technology that allows us to interact with people, impact them, and be impacted by them very easily. On the good side it's easy, & on the bad side there aren't clear visible emotions for the other friend to understand the true intentions of a post, or feedback.
Yet regardless of that sometimes Facebook is unintentionally misused in the way we express ourselves through it. So instead of deactivating Facebook as a means of blocking my reactions to it, I thought that perhaps if I can comply to some simple rules I can get the benefit of Facebook without the drawbacks.
What are the drawbacks?
Ego: Self expression that is self centered, and seeks to collect appreciation (Likes) without concern of good utility or welfare of others. It is good to receive appreciation for an achievement we've done, for an important event in our life, or a sad event in which we need others to tap on us and tell us "it's ok". But this is not always the case. Sometimes a status will be all about attention withdrawal disregarding any good utility or quality.
Time: Extreme time consumption. In the pre-facebook era, a person may have had to read a novel to kill time, to learn a new musical instrument, a new language, or perhaps exercise, take a walk or go to the club and play sports. Slowly and gradually new smartphone habits started to take over, to check every new story in the Newsfeed as soon as it comes out. But considering there is at least 70% redundant data on the Newsfeed the new time killer is not teaching me good stuff most of the time.
Reactions: Due to our opinion differences, human nature is still not ready to accept each other. Coupled with our inability to react properly adapting to the new technology, we tend to mess up our relationships with our friends because we just forget that text is still dull. If our feedback to other posts or statuses has been face to face in real life, there would be abundant room to fix any misunderstandings. On Facebook however, we react presuming that other friends will understand us right away, but it's not the same as in real life, and things go wrong.
What are the possible solutions?
Put others first: Is this post or status worth of my friends' time or not? Is it going to add any value to others? Then, is this post going to motivate me, encourage me, or add some value to me that I truly need people to provide me?
Time management: What is more worth doing than checking the phone every 5 minutes? If I checked for the Newsfeed 2 or 3 times per day, am I going to miss any important friends or family events? How many hours can I save to learn something worthwhile if I did just that? How many novels I can read and improve my English vocabulary for business productivity to mention one thing? Can I just invest more time exercising for healthy living style and lose some weight?
New habits for Feed-backing: Is my feedback to another status or post going to add any value to the welfare of my friend? Is my feedback going to add any value or it will simply represent repressed emotional charges? Is public feed-backing a proper way to vent off anger, or it's better to send them a private message to explain why? Am I just feed-backing to show off, or for the welfare of my friend?
It's worthwhile mentioning that if I had mastered any of the possible solutions, I wouldn't deactivate Facebook at all, but the problem is that most of our reactions are done unconsciously. We become aware of doing things after doing things, and not while doing them. So I guess it's worth to try following a new pattern of interactions on Facebook. Maybe one day I'll stop deactivating Facebook if this works.
Imagine if every person did that, how higher quality is the Newsfeed going to be? In some European countries as far as I've heard, finding a new story in the Newsfeed is a luxury. Doesn't this perhaps reflect the state of civilization or the higher quality of content available? Maybe there is truth in the theory that middle-eastern people's mentality is more emotional, which would perfectly suit the need to give a 5 second thought before rushing to the status and spilling what's in our mind!