Are you going to delete Facebook?

So recently there has been the whole #deletefacebook movement going on where people all around the world are asking others to delete their Facebook account. For people that find it hard to remove Facebook from their lives(whether for personal or business reasons), I would like to offer an alternative way of just using it in mindfully to minimize yourself from losing your precious time.

In today's world, we are constantly barged by a stream of information from our screens(mainly our computers and smartphones). Today's writing is to challenge everyone to be aware of their consciousness whenever scrolling on their social media newsfeed. Are you doing it because you want to? Or are you mindlessly doing it because you're manipulated to do so?

After working on machine learning and artificial intelligence for a bit, I quickly realized that these big corporations have literally thousands of engineers to craft up the perfect newsfeed for you to maximize your attention on their platforms. Often times these algorithms are even hard for the engineers to explain themselves as it consists of equations stack upon one another that use highly powerful computing chips to calculate.

These algorithms become so complex that technology corporations rather just use it to maximize their revenue(your attention span to their advertisement) than finding out exactly how their algorithms work. Hence, we fall into the trap of social media today thinking that we actually want to scroll our newsfeed but in reality we are being manipulated psychologically to do it.

However, there is no way we are going to ask big corporations to stop using these algorithms. So I think the next best method is for us to realize that whenever we are using social media we are actually not doing so entirely on our own free will but we are manipulated in doing so. Being aware and acknowledging it is the first step, but you can take further steps to understand how to use social media that serves you in a better way.

So let's cut to the chase and discuss how we can use social media more mindfully and in control of it rather than the other way round. These are also some steps that I'm personally doing.

1. Just being mindful when you are using social media

   • Whenever you're clicking an link, ask yourself if you actually want to click on that. What do you want to get out of liking, sharing, commenting, tagging something or someone? What is your intention?
   • Whenever you're sharing an article, make sure you read the whole thing instead of just the headlines and also reflect on whether sharing it to your circle of friends is what you intent to do.
   • Whenever you're mindlessly scrolling your feed, pause and ask yourself if you can do without.

2. If you are using Facebook on a browser and mobile, you can try some tools that I use which I find pretty useful.

   • FB Purity - this is an extension that helps you manage the look of your feed, giving you authority to hide sidebars, ads, pictures, videos and etc.
   • Using greyscale for Facebook App on your phone iOS Android - the reasoning is that advertisments and Facebook uses colors to draw your attention to what is on your screen. The notification in red is constantly probing you to click on it. Try greyscale for a change and you'll see that you can use Facebook more mindfully and be in control of your intentions.

3. Use social media with intent - social media should be a tool to help you better your life. Use it for its original purpose:- to connect with actual people and form meaningful relationships.

• Don't put your Facebook app on your phone's homescreen if possible. Try to hide it or delete it so everytime you want to open it, you force yourself to type it out or install it back. This will give you some time to think and ask yourself whether it is important or not.
• Use alternative platforms. Go old school from time to time: texts, call, write physical letters, actually meet someone face-to-face. The more physical the task the more your mind have to think about it and actually do it with intent.
• Take charge of your notification settings. - Learn what notifications are important to you and only turn those on. Turn the rest off. For the most part, I have turned off notifications from groups, pages, apps and anything non-people related.

Okay so these are the few steps for now. It will be hard at first but in time you will realize that a lot of the time you spent on social media is actually mindlessly scrolling and giving free information to Facebook and advertisers. Using this, Facebook will then use your behavior to engineer an even more immersive experience by tailoring the ads for you.

There is a reason Facebook do not charge people for using it, you and your data are their product and the advertisers are their users. Do not give away your precious time so freely--time is our most valueble asset.

It is time to take control of how you use social media slowly and step by step :) Let me know how it goes by commenting below. Also, if you find any other tips that is useful please share them in the comments too!

Warmly,

-D-