Finding new ways...

I don't think I can handle Facebook anymore. It's too trivial, it's too dramatic, it's too posed, it's too filtered, it's too much information, it's too little importance, it's just TOO MUCH!

I fought this - I said I needed it to stay in touch with people. Family wanted to see my kids. How else would I find out a celebrity died or a major news event happened?

But then all I saw were meaningless images asking people to answer questions or to just re-share.

"What is your favorite 80's movie?"
"If you had to give up only ONE, which would you pick?"
"How picky of an eater are you - 1 point per food!"
"If you know what this item is - click share!"

And the jokes.... and the memes. And that is all the 3rd party silly stuff that pages do to generate traffic.

THEN you get the vague booking. Or the major rants. Or the comments you can see that you are pretty sure you friend/family member didn't want you to see!

Add to this all the assumptions. The person who didn't like or comment, and the second guessing as to why they didn't say anything. The lack of punctuation or an emoji, are they mad at me? The person who jokes or teases on a post, and it really wasn't the right place. So many things that can be misconstrued or misunderstood.

So - now what? I've been working on eliminating what I follow to clean up my feed - and all the comments on public pages are overwhelming my feed. So I keep tidying up my privacy, my settings and I don't think it's helping.

I have one friend not on social media. ONE. I have to text her pictures of my kids or call/text her with question or to chat. I actually really love it! Everyone else when I sit down to lunch with them, and want to tell them about something interesting the answer is "Oh I saw that you posted that!" I used to mail letters but all my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins are on FB, so I just assume they see everything there.

I read an article that said "I quit Facebook and I survived."

Our family is tied up in media. But I want to go off the grid, of sorts. We are going to have quite a different year starting in June - lots of travel, relocation and change in education. I want to find a better way to communicate and keep in touch. I want to connect more. I don't know if blogging, vlogging, personal messages or just disconnecting is the path I'm going to go, but I do know I need a 12 step plan of sorts of social media. I am thinking that I will use Instagram, for what I deem "important" and auto-upload to FB. But I will not "browse" FB as much anymore. I think we will definitely do a blog/vlog situation with our travels and my son's experiences with online schooling. I'm looking forward to a change, and a deeper connection to those around us!