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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

My Facebook Addiction

Due to many reasons, one being me addicted to this social networking website; I decided to stay off of Facebook. I logged off from the app and also the browser in my phone. Safe side I took off the app from my main screen too. That was the easy part.

What followed was difficult.
The next day I woke up and my hand automatically reached for my phone, I opened the browser and went on the website to find that I had logged out of it. It was then that I realised my last night's decision. The same action happened multiple times that day. After a while I realised that my phone was used by me mostly for Facebook, followed by Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram. I hardly ever use the phone nowadays for calling.
So that morning, which was a Sunday, I got up and started reading the newspaper during breakfast. A habit I used to dilligently exercise when I was in the 7th standard in school. After 2 hours, I had read the newspaper from front to last page (well that is an exaggeration, as I don't read the sports section. But I did read the whole editorial section, and all of the first page news). Sitting for 2 hours straight reading would have been a piece of cake for me in the pre-smartphone era. But it wouldn't have been possible today, as I keep checking my phone for any new updates from Viral social media websites like Buzzfeed, Scoopwhoop, BoredPanda, Cracked.com, and some Bollywood news websites. After so many years, I felt a pure feeling of achievement not marred by guilt of not giving all I've got for the task.
Afterwards I cleaned a whole shelf of old textbooks and notes. Right from 12 pm, till around at 9 pm in the night, breaking away only for food and some tv. This task which I've been procrastinating for years (I still have my BA notes), was finished in one day.
I did face certain difficulties.
1. The need to post what I'm doing. It made me crazy. "watching this film", "watching cricket". The need to tell someone 'exactly what I'm doing was so bad that at one point of time I was going to blab out loud a witty status when my whole family was taking a nap. The disgusting feeling stopped my from doing that though.
2. I didn't get to share with the world my happiness of Leo finally getting the Oscar, nor the songs I'm listening to, the films I watched.
But what I achieved in the past few days is gold.
1. My fingers got some well deserved rest from handling a huge phone and scrolling and tapping.
2. I hardly ever have to charge my phone.
3. My phone doesn't heat up.
4. My mind got some rest from the world. Social networking sites are full of problems going around in the world. Granted that they help you being in touch with what is happening in your country and world. But does stating your mind, having to defend your POV, pull your hair at the blatant disregard for fellow humans and animals is supporting the issue or even beneficial to you?

But all things are not so happy happy. I did cheat.
Now I am focused on Snapchat and Instagram. But here's the deal, there's only so much you can do on both these sites. You can check out the daily updates of certain websites on Snapchat, and Instagram gets really boring quickly. It's just pictures of mindless stuff sometimes, with equally mindless, unrelated tags. I did also go on twitter an tweeted about Leo.
Also I logged in to send a friend request on Fb. But I swear on myself that I logged out immediately afterwards.
So even after cheating on the 'Diet' I do find myself most of the time without a phone in my hand.

It's been a week since I was active on Facebook. And I'm alive and sane.
So now I'm going to log in again on Fb to share this post, I hope I come back alive!

6 comments:

  1. Haha really nice one! I've decided to try it, hopefully it works *fingers crossed*

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    Replies
    1. Oh do try it, for a few days. The first hurdle is logging out. Just don't forget your password as we don't use it everyday. You'll feel the withdrawal at start. But after a while you will get over it.

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