How To Overcome Your Facebook Fatigue

Digital Detox or Quitting?

I’m all for digital detoxes, but going without checking your accounts for a day or weekend won’t be effective. I realised that checking Facebook had become a daily chore. It wasn’t until I went cold turkey on all of my social media channels for two weeks that I felt the full effect. I had an overwhelming feeling of relief.

My friend calls it the ‘when we compare, we despair’ feeling – referring to seeing only the shiny side of other people’s lives on social media. I decided to reassess my purpose for using Facebook, clean up my feed and spend less time on the platform. You might like to ask yourself:

• What is your purpose of being on this platform?
• Does it make you feel better about yourself?
• Could you be spending this time on a hobby, learning a new skill, reading a book or catching up with someone face to face?

Spring Clean your Facebook Feed

If you decide you want your Facebook feed to serve your needs better, it might be time for a spring clean.

True Friends or Foe?

Danish researchers found that people using social media prefer to have long message exchanges with those already close with them. Ask yourself honestly:

• Are you really good friends with all of these people?
• Would I stop and talk to them in the street?
• Do I still care about their personal lives?
• Do you receive information from this person or company in another form, like a paper flyer or email?

If they rant and rave negatively then it’s time to let them go (hide or unfollow). If you follow all your old work colleagues, you may want to consider deleting them and reconnecting with them over on LinkedIn.

Personalise your Facebook Settings

To change your Facebook settings, go to the top right-hand corner and click on the black down arrow. Here you can adjust the following areas to your personal needs:

Settings

Start at the top and click on each of the following sections:

• General Account Settings: If you haven’t changed your password in the last year, please do so now.
• Privacy: Go through your privacy settings and reduce who can your content.
• Notifications: Off. Off. Off. Now doesn’t that feel better?
• Apps: Hover over the app and click the grey x to remove. Make sure you only have apps you are still using connected to your account. Click on the grey pencil to change App visibility to Only me.
• Videos: Change to SD Only (standard definition – if you want to reduce your bandwidth) and change auto-play videos to off so you control what you watch.

Your Facebook Groups

Go back to the top right-hand corner black triangle and select Your Groups. Here you can remove any groups you no longer need or use. I reduced mine to around half as many. Just click on the daisy button and select ‘Leave the group’.

Liked Pages

Head back to your home on Facebook and select Liked Pages in the left-hand column. Start deleting any which are no longer of interest to you.

What does Facebook know about you?

If you are interested in knowing what Facebook knows about you, visit your Facebook advert preferences page. Apparently, I am interested in gambling, lighting, baseball and ice hockey (I’m not). You can adjust these settings to be more accurate.

I suggest you do a regular spring clean of your social media accounts every couple of months starting with Facebook.