A Year of Self-Care: January – Giving Up Facebook

Here we are, in another new year and guess what that means for me? Another new challenge!

You can read about last year’s annual challenge and this year’s challenge on the intro post here. I love having a focus throughout the entire year, especially when it comes to my blog. It was an absolute no-brainer what self-care task I’d be carrying out this month to kick this series off!

I’ve been contemplating coming off Facebook for a while now, but there’ve been two things holding me back. 1 – I don’t actually really want to give it up forever, and 2 – it’s my blog’s main driver. That being said, I ended 2020 feeling particularly negative, and if you join me regularly you’ll know that as a result of the pandemic, I had somehow become addicted to spending many of my precious daily hours doomscrolling into the abyss. By the end of the year, my screentime had increased dramatically and I found the constant influx of news and abysmal journalism, general complaining, sniping and negativity just too much to handle. I was at a point where I hadn’t even been awake for 5 minutes, and I’d be reaching for my phone as though being controlled by some mindless addicted-to-negativity ghost, ready to ingest a month’s supply of negativity in the space of 20 minutes. I hadn’t even left my bed, and I’d already feel deflated and demotivated for the day ahead. I did a small review of what was making me feel this way, and discovered that it was predominantly Facebook.

So, I decided that it was time to come off Facebook. However, I know that a lot of people keep up to date with my blog via the platform, and I don’t think I’m quite ready to give it up forever just yet. I just need a break from the monotony of it all, and to allow myself to stop feeling so jaded and bitter all the time because of what I’m seeing on it. So what I’m doing this month is giving up the way I currently use Facebook. I’m giving up the mindless scrolling, becoming frustrated and annoyed by the constant moaning and negativity, being triggered by callous, narrow-minded, inhumane comments on news outlets that infiltrate my feed, and the general feeling of being downtrodden by what I’m seeing. I’ll be going on it to share and engage with my blog, clear notifications, and perhaps still share some general photos etc. from Instagram, as I find that a much nicer and more bearable place than my Facebook feed, but my aim is to do not much else.

So, for the first task of A Year of Self-Care, I’m not giving up Facebook per se, but I’ll be hugely limiting my interaction with the platform. I’m interested to see how I get on and whether I end up missing anything about it – I do think I’ll miss seeing updates and engaging with peoples’ stories. Who knows, maybe coming off it will make me realise that all I need to do is delete a load of people and unfollow even more news outlets than I’ve already unfollowed in the last year, or maybe I will learn that I just need to not be affected by what I see in my feed. Only time will tell!

So if I don’t engage with you, or wish you happy birthday, or tell you your kid’s cute or that you look nice in a photo, or anything else that I usually do whilst on Facebook, forgive me. Caring for myself takes priority at the moment, and if something is really important in your life – you can just text me, I’m still here!

Have a great January, and I’ll see you in February (or next week for my weekly 5 Minute Coffee Corner post!)