Assignment 2: I didn't like anything on Facebook for several days

Out of the available options for this assignment, I chose what I felt was the least possible of the evils and did not "like" anything on Facebook between Thursday and Tuesday.  The first thing that was apparent was that, much as I had imagined, it was very difficult not to "like" things, and in fact I had to "unlike" several things to not violate the rules of the assignment, because it is such an ingrained reaction.  Because I am such an active Facebook presence, I knew all of my friends would be alarmed if I suddenly stopped obsessively liking their posts, so I posted an alert to let everyone know what was going on.  While in truth I doubt anyone would have paid that much attention to my lack of "liking" things, I thought it was interesting how disgruntled and offended that some people were at the idea that "liking" could be proscribed.  This stuff is serious.

                Because of the way I often use social media, on the run for a few seconds or a minute here or there, I don't comment near as much as I "like", and when I was not allowed to "like," I found myself feeling uncomfortable and disengaged a lot.  I didn't have time to comment and I couldn't like anything; without the ability to interact, what was the point? So I actually ended up not being on Facebook nearly as much.  And the benefit of that, not at all surprisingly, was that I was much more engaged with my friends and family who were actually present.  And that, also not surprisingly, had the benefit of improving those relationships. 

                What I took away from this experiment, as a learning experience, is that while I believe social media does add a certain dimension of quality to my life and relationships, I also think to a much greater extent, it detracts significantly from my overall quality of life and the quality of parent/friend/sister/student that I can be.  While being relatively unengaged for a few days on Facebook didn't appear to damage those relationships, it did noticeably improve my "real life" relationships.  Ideally I would find a balance between those two, so that I could continue to interact on social media without detracting from everyday life.  However, if I'm not able to do that, I would consider finding a way to disengage from Facebook so that I can better focus my energies on my priorities. 

                I might have more to say about this, but I have to go take a Facebook quiz about which Frozen character I am…