2023-05-12

Why I've Stopped Using Facebook (Again) as a Means of Personal Communication

I started using Facebook as a means of personal communication for the first time in late August 2016, right after I got married (in the meanwhile I've got divorced). I originally intented to use it to share pictures of our honeymoon and new married life with my parents and sister as well as a small number of close friends.

It didn't take long to realize that I had become addicted to Facebook and this had started to harm our married life. So only after about six months I stopped using it.

In retrospect, I know clearly now that my addiction was to instant gratifications for "likes" I received for my posts there. I also know clearly now that the more sensational the posts are, the more "friends" they reach by design.

So when I had to start using Facebook again in July 2018 as a means of marketing my new private business of Jewish life coaching, I didn't intend to use Facebook for this purpose, but the moment I reopened my account, I was flooded with "friend" requests from people I also know offline. I accepted most of them, but I told myself to use it very carefully as a means of personal communication this time.

Again it didn't take me long to realize that Facebook has some fundamental flaws as a platform for meaningful personal communication. This time I shared all my personal posts in public on purpose in order to minimize the danger of writing them from my ego. I also tried my best to stay away from those who write negative and/or toxic posts.

On the one hand, I had a far less number of meaningful dialogs with those with whom I remained connected this time. On the other hand, even after I unfriended those with whom I had no interaction whatsoever, most posts by the rest of my "friends" didn't interest me very much as they seemed to have shared their posts with their respective "friends" for instant gratifications though this must have been unconscious.

To make a long story short, I stopped using Facebook as a means of personal communication about a year ago though I continue to use it for marketing my private business and follow the business pages of those individuals and organizations that inspire me and contribute to my spiritual growth.

Since then I've never missed this personal use of Facebook as I see now that it was one of the main sources of my daily stress. And since then I make a conscious effort to invest more time and energy in other means of personal communication, including face-to-face communication, telephone conversations, chats with instant messengers, and email correspondences. These days I'm reappreciating the power and importance of face-to-face communication, especially in terms of its spiritual vibration.

It's true that since I stopped used Facebook (again), I've lost in touch with certain people. But this seems to be a kind of connection I can do without. If I really care about someone, I contact him or her by other means of communication, if not every Monday and Thursday. Recently I've started doing so consciousnly.