How to Take a Break from Facebook Gracefully
Facebook is a site that has allowed the world to communicate with ease, and there has been plenty of good that comes from it. People have met the loves of their lives by just sending a stranger a message. People have networked with others and have become successful thanks to Facebook. You can find humor, good vibes, and some beautiful photos on this site.
However, Facebook can be a bastion of negativity, heated political debate, and just doom and gloom. Not to mention, you can find yourself spending too much time on there and less time being productive. If you are finding this to be the case, perhaps it’s time to take a break from Facebook. Taking a break can improve your mental health by quite a bit and allow you to improve other aspects of your life. Facebook allows you to deactivate and then restore your profile when you’re ready to come back. Here are a few tips to make this smooth.
Tell People You’re Leaving for a Bit
In the online world, if you disappear from Facebook, some people assume the worst. Before you have people writing your obituary and looking for adoptive parents for your children make sure you tell everyone that you aren’t dead, just taking a break. If you plan on deactivating instead of logging off, give people a head’s up and allow that status to sit a bit before you hit the deactivate button.
You Can Still Use Messenger While Deactivated
One little perk about Facebook is that if you deactivate, you can choose to keep your Messenger open. This is a nice little middle ground, allowing you to communicate with your contacts while still staying off the general site. In fact, a deactivated Facebook can mean better time to communicate and get to know your online friends a little better.
Resist the Urge to Get Back On
Facebook has become a bit of habit. We instinctually check our Facebooks without realizing it. We’ll be browsing Facebook on our computers and then open up Facebook on our smartphones. Thus it makes it hard for you to simply not log back on. If you catch yourself doing that, back off. Get yourself a filter if you must and put Facebook on your blocked sites list. This can allow you to lessen your chances of relapsing. If you have kids.
Come Back When You Truly Feel Ready
After you take your Facebook break, you may start to feel better about keeping focused, and once you are truly ready, come back.
Try to Curate Your News Feed
If the reason why you left is because of negativity, try to do some spring cleaning on your feed. You can unfollow people without unfriending. This is great for people you like in person, yet have obnoxious online personalities. Follow more positive pages or humorous pages and less doom and gloom. Make sure to like posts more so that the algorithms change in your favor.
Facebook’s feed is sometimes hard to curate, but by doing some regular cleaning, you can be able to manage it a bit easier.
Seek Help!
If you find yourself addicted to Facebook or don’t know how you should communicate with people, a therapist can help. Thanks to the advancement of telemedicine, you can be able to communicate to a therapist on the phone or through Skype. Sites such as Regain make it much easier for you to talk to the therapist you’re looking for.
Facebook can be great, but there are obvious disadvantages as well. Change up your feed to make it easier, and take a break if you can.
