Detoxing from Facebook...

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I have been a Facebook devotee for around 4 years now.

Working in an office for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week it has been a staple of my daily routine.
Sit down at my desk with my morning coffee - check emails, check Facebook, start my work.

Over the past few weeks something started to not sit right with me about the good old FB and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

I caught up with a dear friend of mine a few days ago and our conversation began to veer towards the latest goss (nothing new there) and what people we doing (many according to updates I'd seen on FB).

It's funny how a little over 5 years ago none of us even knew about FB and the revolution that was about to take hold and change many of our social networking lives. And now, for many of us it's become a part of our daily routine, a way of life.

You see what dawned on me when chatting with my friend that day was how much we now rely on social networking sites to keep up to date with what is happening in our friends lives. We now see where they are and when, who they're with, what's going on at work, at home, on the weekend, even what they wore to a party last Saturday.
For many of us this has become our way of keeping up with the latest and greatest in our friend's lives.
Want to know how a friend is? Write on their wall.
Want to organise a party? Send an event invitation.
Want to ......
Sure, social networking is great fun but what happens when you realise that it's become more of a part of your life than actually seeing or calling friends to catch up?

Over the past few months I have found I have reassessed many of my friendships and a big part of that has been the 'friendships' I have on Facebook.

Take a look at your list of 'friends'. Do you have 100? 300? 500?
How many of them do you actually care about? And how many of them are you only 'friends' with so that you can snoop into their profile?

One thing I have found over the past couple of months is the feeling I get after checking the latest on my news feed.
Up until the other day I didn't quite realise what exactly it was that didn't sit well with me.
And then it kind of hit me when I was chatting with my friend.

I tend to compare my life to others.

Now, don't get me wrong, my life is pretty damn good.
It's just that of late I seemed to compare.

It took me back to a couple of years ago when it seemed that every single person on FB was getting engaged and I started comparing their exciting milestone to the one I had been waiting on... Now if only I had've known at the very time my dear boyfriend was having my engagement ring made and was planning to pop the question...
But I found I compared back then, and I have started to compare again now.

Funnily enough my girlfriend also said the exact same thing. And you know what she decided to do? Give Facebook the flick!
She told me how she now feels better not comparing peoples lives to her own and how she catches up in person or on the phone with those friends she truly wants to have a relationship with.

So what did I do then? I decided to detox...

Hi, my name is Kristen and I am a Facebook addict.

And so it's now been almost a week and you know what? I feel so much better already! I am taking myself out of the FB gossip and I am now debating deleting my profile all together... Perhaps that will be the next step of my program...