Getting up in the morning you roll over to grab your phone, checking in on your social media account.
Looks like a friend got a new haircut, her daughter made the soccer team, and an acquaintance from your geometry class 20 years ago finally got the job she was waiting for.
As you almost impulsively click the “like” button scrolling through, you can’t help but to begin to feel like you have slipped into mindless rote- and you may be on to something.
The inception of social media offered endless promise, creating a platform that connected friends and family from all over the globe.
As popularity grew, intimate exchanges of personal moments got lost in the sheer number of users.
A projected 2.77 billion people will have subscribed to a social media account in 2019, according to Statista.
It use to be that your Facebook friends list consisted of only people you actually knew in real life, but has now grown to include individuals from seemingly 20 degrees of separation.
These kinds of connections toy with the psyche, creating a false sense of connection that is only realized when the screens are off, and the room becomes deafening silent.
KJ Dell’Antonia writing for the New York Times has sensed this superficial appreciation for her most precious moments posted to Facebook.
She says:
“..I’m not going to post them on social media. Because I tried that for a while, and I came to a simple conclusion about getting the reactions of friends, family and acquaintances via emojis and exclamations points rather than hugs and actual exclamations.
It’s no fun. And I don’t want to do it anymore.”
I think we all at one point or another have had this same reckoning with our social media account.
We are led to delete or suspend our profile until we have battled the sub-conscious war over the sincerity and importance of online interactions.
CNBC reports that 44% of Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 29 have deleted the app sometime in the last year, but only 26% of all users leave it that way.
Contrary to our conflicting soul, we lie defeated, ultimately clicking on that inviting app once more to scroll the daily happenings of our close, and not-so-close, “friends.”
A whopping two-thirds of Americans use Facebook, with an increasing 40% of adult users “taking a break from checking Facebook for several weeks or more,” reports the New York Times.
Facebook has been in the limelight recently, influencing user behavior. They have got into some legal snafus after controversy with protecting user data.
Many conservatives are also limiting their Facebook usage when it became apparent that the company’s liberal agenda is censoring posts with a bias, as Mommy Underground has previously reported.
While privacy and mistreatment are definitely legitimate reasons for scaling back from Facebook hours, others are expressing a new cause for their reduced screen time.
People don’t like the way they feeling after they have closed their Facebook session, even changing the way they act based on the content they viewed.
We have all excitedly posted the perfect baby photo on Facebook, anxiously awaiting a slew of “likes” and “adorable” comments, only to find that somehow your photo has been overlooked by many.
Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan with the New Parents Project has found these types of scenarios add to anxiety and depression in new moms.
PBS reports on her study:
“Indeed, we found that mothers who were more prone to seek external validation for their mothering identity and were perfectionistic about parenting experienced increases in depressive symptoms indirectly through higher levels of Facebook activity. Moreover, greater Facebook activity was also linked to elevated parenting stress for new mothers.”
So, what can we do about the Facebook dilemma? We want to keep up with our family and friends, but don’t want it to have a negative impact on our family.
The New York Times reported on a blog post by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg where he plans on taking Facebook in a new direction, making it a “fundamentally more private experience.”
Until then, we can scale down our friends list to only people we know personally; individuals who’s opinions we value.
Take it a step further by designating only certain times of day, and length of time, you can check Facebook, making it a time when the family is not losing quality time with you.
Share the really precious moments with your loved ones in person, at a time when eye contact, affection, and affirmation are genuine and immediate.
Facebook can be a great way to show grandma out west the announcement photo of your new baby, or find like-minded individuals to share your trials with, but then call it quits.
Keeping it to use for these rare events is convenient, but don’t let it take your limited time with family away or damage your sense of identity and security.
All things in moderation- except love, hugs, and cuddles of course!
Please let us know in the comments section if you have noticed Facebook impacting your time with family, or your mood.