My Decision to Leave Facebook

Question:

Why are we so caught up in our obsession with online social connectivity?

Yesterday, I had an eye opening experience while sitting on the couch of a newly acquainted friend's condo. I was having a momenet with my Blackberry only to take my eye off of her for a second to find the other 3 guys in the room consumed by their iPhone, MacBook, and PS3 respectively. There was little to no conversation happening in the room and it made me a little disgusted, especially since I was one of the people involved in the "screen slavery". Never before have screens got more attention than human beings. Here's a test, next time you're at school, work or out for dinner with friends, observe how many people are involved with their phones more than making actual connectivity with the people around them, it's quite disturbing. We are becoming like droids being plugged into this stream of technology infused culture where distraction is all around us and productivity is no where to be found.

We are now more than a decade into the "Age of Information", but you might as well call it the Age of Distraction because there have never been more to keep our minds off what really matters. While humanity has never been completely free of distraction, in the present day never have the distractions been as overwhelming and persistent as it is right now. Thus why I plan on minimalizing distraction by removing Facebook and other time wasting tools out of my personal life.

Cable was the first distraction I cut out of my life. I became an avid reader, keeping my face in more books instead of logging time on Facebook. I soon found out that book after book, my understanding of the world we live in became increasingly more vivid and clear. You could say, I now have a higher definition of viewing the world from viewing less high definition. Easily one of the best decision I made in 2010. This year I planned on removing Facebook from my life. After reasoning with myself and subconsciously picking up on some obvious signals along the way, I made the choice to remove a major distraction and notorious time killer from my life.

This is more than just a statement, it's a vision of something bigger to come. The underlying focus is to boost the moral and personal gratification of certain aspects in my life and spend more time concentrating on intimate relationships, not just connecting with them online. Yes, connecting with family and close friends online is important to me but paradoxically, I feel there would be a boost in our quality of life, our relationships, and our sense of community if we all spent less time social networking online and spent more time concentrating on actually connecting with people we truly and genuinely care about in real time. Erin Lacourciere said it best as her New Year's Resolution: "Less Face-book time and more Face time."

It is a lot easier to hide behind a keyboard than it is to confront someone. We spend less time with our friends and family because when we are with them we are all on our mobile devices being consumed by whatever it is that is happening right now in the fast-paced, never ending, always growing social networking world. There are simple solutions to devoting more love and appreciation to your closest friends and family, instead of reverting to SMS, Email or Facebook. Make a phone call or surprise them with a quick visit to their home. It will show that you have character, a quick text messag can give off the impression that you are a "care-acter", not actually caring. It's easy to pretend and be fake behind the anonymity of a keyboard, in fact I find it to be very impersonal and cheap. If you truly care about someone, you will make the extra effort to get in touch with them, call them, or even stop by for a visit like the good old days before cell phones when we were little kids and your friends actually ran over to your house to see you, it shows love and legitimate care for a person. I miss that and want to find a way to resurrect these old school values in a new school way.

Facebook has become the lazy person's tool for staying "connected" without actually having to be connected. Attaining more friends without actually having any friends. Staying in the loop with your communities with out even having to leave the house. This is a sad, yet true reality of the way things are and where we are headed. I say just because this is how it is right now, doesn't mean it's the way it has to be.

All I know is in the present day, 2011, we have entered into a time where we can no longer escape technology. We have created it and now it has consumed us. There is virtually endless amounts of shopping, downloading, uploading, surfing, blogging, social networking, and gaming that can take up all of your precious personal time. All the while, as you're brain is being sucked into your one-on-one time with your computer, several new notifications have popped up on your Blackberry or iPhone, forcing you to be distracted every minute of every hour, stealing your attention away from the most important matters in life.

If you don't know what I'm talking about consider this.

Right now you have several programs opened up on your MacBook, multiple pages on your web browser, you're PVR'ing two shows at the same time while watching another and attempting to keep five BBM/SMS conversations going all at once. This is just one primary example of the multitude of distractions in our day-to-day lives. Removing one or many of these is a huge step towards the productiveness of our humanity and image of our reality.

We’ve come into this Age without being aware that it was actually happening or
even realized the consequences to follow. The sad truth is that the internet has become an addiction for many. There’s this instant short-term gratification we receive from constant activities such as checking our email, text messages, favorite blogs, forums, Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook. That’s why it’s so easy to become addicted to being connected and distracted. No one seems to think there is anything wrong with this; meanwhile other addictive activities, such as doing harmful drugs or eating unhealthy fast food have the same kind of instant positive feedback. You do the activity and almost instantly you’re rewarded with some kind of pleasure and you don’t feel the negative consequences until later.

It has become so outrageous that now it is not only a standard but an expectation for you to be a part of social networking. It's in our blood, you're either dead or you're Facebooking. More than half of Canadian citizens are now on Facebook so it has officially become the norm. I'm sure some of you have seen the 2010 blockbuster, "Social Network" if you haven't rent it today and open your eyes to what is known as the biggest phenomenon on the planet today. Facebook. Embarrassingly so it has even interlaced into our lingo.

"Today, I Tagged your sister, Liked your girlfriend's profile, then Poked your mom"

Facebook has become the "Face" of our world and to many quitting would seem like an outlandish or even Amish thing to do. Sure, I'll wind up a social networking outcast. I won't be invited to all of the important "groups" and hyped up "events". Let's just say, it's the risk I'm willing to take to receive less distraction, more productivity, and a higher quality of life.

Here’s an example of how distracted you are. If you somehow have made it this far reading my words, how many times did you get distracted or tempted to switch to something else? How many times did you think of something you wanted to do, check your phone, change the channel or deviate from this page by means of other distractions? How many times did you want
to switch, but resisted? How many different things made a noise or visual distraction while you were reading? How many people tried to get your attention? In an ideal world, the answers to all those questions would be “zero”, you’d be able to read with no distractions, and completely focus all the time.

Removing Facebook is one rather large source of distraction for me personally. It will allow me to harness more of my time on writing, creating, and maintaining important relationships as well as getting my career on the right track. I hope some of you have become inspired to alter or remove certain distractions from your own lives. It doesn't have to necessarily be Television or Facebook. It can be anything, as long as know you are making a conscious effort to strive towards realizing your purpose, potential and living out your true passion.

Finally, to put things into perspective, out of nearly 1000 people that I have on Facebook, roughly 100 will acknowledge this post. Out of those 100, maybe 10-15 will actually read this. Out of those 10-15, few will read the entire thing without being distracted, but only one will become inspired to do the same with their life. One is all I am looking for right now. You can't expect the masses to lead, following is what we do and what we have done for centuries and centuries. All it takes is one leader out of 1000 to stand up and spark the necessary change needed within a society. If no one stands up, we will continue to head in a direction with no direction. When the Italians decided to sail the uncharted seas into the unknown, somebody had to step up and steer the ship. That man was Columbus. If it were not for his uncanny courage, they would not have founded North America and who knows what the state of our culture would look like right now or if there would even be one. I'm not saying I'm Columbus but today we are faced with the same kind of challenges as they did. For the last decade and a half we have been surfing the uncharted seas of the web in discovery of something better. We have already realized the infinite access to information we have on the internet, yet we have become the laziest and most unproductive Age in history. Quite simply because there have never been more to distract us. In reality, given the circumstances and access to resources and technology we do today, it is remarkable how little we actually get done. It is time to reshape the way we view our world, ourselves, and each other. There is a better way and I plan on finding out exactly what that is.