Giving Up Facebook For Lent
I love Facebook, but recently, it’s been more of an
annoyance than a fun place to be. It’s not just the marketing messages (which I’m guilty of, too, as the creator and moderator of the
Chief Marketer Network fan page), but other factors that have made me my own worst enemy on Facebook (adding long-lost friends who in reality I wish remained long-lost, friend requests from colleagues I’ve yet to meet in person, and just seeing how nasty people can be to each other).
So I decided to give up Facebook for Lent (if not all together), and I think it’s going to be easy. I found out it wasn’t an original idea – college students did it back in the day when Facebook was a college-student-only haven. But with that in mind, there are some lessons out there on how to give up Facebook for Lent.
When I announced my decision Monday with a note on my Facebook page, a friend of mine passed along this article from CNET executive editor Lindsey Turrentine. The article tells you how you can give up Facebook for Lent without your friends thinking you are snubbing them. And the five-step program also reminds those looking to give up Facebook for Lent that changing your status update via Twitter (a social media that I kinda loathe) is cheating.
WSJ also ran a piece yesterday about people giving up Facebook for Lent, as told by people the writer met through a Facebook group page called, simply enough, “Giving Up Facebook For Lent.” And a lot of them have the same reason as me for their fast:
Lisandrea Wentland, who does research for a Christian TV network, plays Scrabble and trades amusing YouTube videos on Facebook. Every time she logs on, she says, “it’s like going to the best party in the world.”
Ms. Wentland, who is 38, recently got in touch with a guy she had last seen three decades ago when, at the age of nine, they acted in a school play together. Within the comfy confines of Facebook’s blue-and-white pages, he confided he’d once had a crush on her.
That was a total rush — until Ms. Wentland paused to ponder the point of such ephemeral connections. They were fun, yes, but they took up more time than she cared to calculate. It had been ages since she’d sat on the floor and played trains with her six-year-old son or baked cookies with her three-year-old daughter.
“I have a real life here, with children, a husband and a job. They need my attention and energy,” Ms. Wentland says.
Here’s the approach I took: I announced my intention to my “friends” to give up Facebook for Lent via a note about 48 hours ago. So friends had a chance to read and react. The amazing thing is people I was real-life friends with before Facebook didn’t quite seem to understand they could still contact me by e-mail or in even by more traditional communications like the phone or human interaction.
Then at 11 p.m. yesterday, I deactivated my account. In effect, I am now invisible until I next sign in. And that won’t be until April 12 (maybe even after that if I’m enjoying my Facebookless life).
My theory: If you’re really my friend, you’ll tell me you or your spouse are expecting, you’re getting married, or actually invite me to your kid’s birthday party instead of posting status updates from it. If you’re truly my friend, you’ll respect my political beliefs and not turn my non-political status updates or link posts into political fodder.
The more I think of it, the more I think giving up Facebook for Lent will be easy.
