Thanksgiving morning, I decided to take a temporary break from Facebook. No big feud or particular drama proceeded this decision. I just woke up one day and decided I had seen enough pictures of other people’s pets for a while. <\/p>\n

Like Number 5 from Short Circuit, I love input. I’m an information junkie. I regularly find myself meandering through Wikipedia, one click after the next. I can no longer watch a movie without having IMDB open while I’m watching it. I love listening to podcasts on a multitude of subjects and I love watching documentaries on Netflix, pretty much regardless of the topic. As I type this, our television is tuned to CNN. <\/p>\n

But not all input is equal. Recently I’ve found myself distracted and overwhelmed by an onslaught of noise. On my computer, tablet, and phone, I’m constantly being fed information: how many miles people I barely know jog, links to urban myths that were debunked a decade ago, and pictures of other people’s dinner. I finally had to call a time out.<\/p>\n

To its credit, Facebook does not make itself easy to walk away from. The Facebook icon on my phone has a small red number that tells me just how many things I’ve missed. It’s quantifiable. “Today, you missed 27 things.” Those things range from “someone you know sent you a message” to “someone you barely know liked a picture of sushi you posted two years ago.” When that little red number hits three digits (about every 48 hours) I launch the app, click “updates” (which clears the number, and close the app.<\/p>\n

With Facebook messenger, not only do you get that little red number, but you also get a pleasant little “ding,” not unlike the sound one might hear if they got a question right on a gameshow. “Someone has messaged you, and you’re a winner!<\/i>” I still check those.<\/p>\n

From a completely narcissistic point of view, I miss sharing things with people. My neighbor put up a lot of Christmas lights. We ate Mexican food with some friends. I took the kids to basketball practice. We ate at a food truck. None of these topics warrant longer blog posts; at best, they’re minor points of conversation. By the time I encounter real people to tell these things too, most of them have been flushed from my cache. <\/p>\n

For that matter, why is it that telling people I’m eating a hotdog seems perfectly normal, while telling someone “I ate a hotdog two weeks ago” seems at best awkward. Borderline creepy, really.<\/p>\n

Approximately 42 times this week Susan has mentioned things to me about other people. Each of these factoids either begins or ends with the phrase “on Facebook.” “On Facebook, I saw Amy went on vacation.” “I saw Amy got a new car on Facebook.” Obviously Facebook is a convenient and rapid way of keeping tabs on what’s going on with people. I suppose if I had seen Amy in person in the past 20 years, the fact that she had purchased a 4 year old Kia would have affected me more.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not personally contributing much to the greater good either with my own updates. Skimming through my last few Facebook updates: I ate some pie, I hung a television on the wall, and I had a cat stand on my head.<\/p>\n

Today at Morgan’s basketball game, my dad told me his mother is in the hospital. He heard via Facebook; I hadn’t heard at all. The side effect to excusing yourself to the world’s biggest social media site is you also excuse yourself from the primary way many people share information. <\/p>\n

I don’t know how long I’ll steer clear of Facebook. There is peace in balance. Plus, my phone is quickly filling up with stupid pictures that I have nowhere else to share. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving morning, I decided to take a temporary break from Facebook. No big feud or particular drama proceeded this decision. I just woke up one day and decided I had seen enough pictures of other people’s pets for a while. Like Number 5 from Short Circuit, I love input. I’m an information junkie. I regularly find myself meandering through Wikipedia, one click after the next. I can no longer watch a movie without having IMDB open while I’m watching it. I love listening to podcasts on a multitude of subjects and I love watching documentaries on Netflix, pretty much regardless… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}