Culture

Wake up in the morning lookin’ like P Diddy, grab my phone and check my Facebook … and learn that Girl Who Was In My Class Last Year “loves Ikea.” Ugh. Who cares?

I’ve got the Facebook Blues. That particular shade of blue makes me feel dissatisfied, bored, and a little uneasy. Like many information-overloaded twenty-somethings, I go through cycles of loving and loathing Facebook. First it’s crap, and boring. Then I pare back my friends, hide statuses from sale boutiques and unfollow that stupid meme account. Great, just my friends’ stuff now … but … do I really need to know about their Wednesday night plans? Or their cat’s attachment issues?

Sometimes I want to just be rid of the whole thing, but inevitably FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) stops me. FOMO is that nagging little voice in the back of my head that says, “if I delete my Facebook account, people will stop inviting me to things! I won’t hear about that flatwarming, or the casino-themed party!”

It’s a little too idealistic to think that people will text, email, or call me to invite me. Be honest – when considering whom to invite to your event, you pretty much just scroll through your Facebook friend list, right? It’s easy to forget those who have opted out. I don’t want to be forgotten.

It’s not exactly Facebook’s fault – Facebook is just the much-maligned platform. Though in fact, a thorough read-through of Facebook’s terms of service might make you want to delete your account anyway.

The problem is more how we use Facebook; follow a thousand friends and “like” a thousand pages and it’s inevitable that you’ll become exhausted. Pare your account back to just the essentials and it becomes boring. But cut yourself off and you miss out on opportunities … right?

Well, maybe not. Maybe my FOMO voice is just sensationalising things. If you’re feeling a bit like I am, take a holiday from Facebook. Make it a week, or two. Nothing drastic, just a quick breather. Uninstall the app, unlink your Pinterest/ Goodreads/ whatever other accounts, and banish that particular shade of blue from your life – hell, replace it with that Twitter shade of blue if you like. Just for a little while … you can always go back, and maybe you’ll return with a little more perspective.