How To Take A Break From Facebook

Whether you like it or not, you will probably find that quite a lot of your life is connected to facebook. Sometimes this is great – finding our information, connecting with people and making friends, and knowing about fun events. But sometimes it’s bad (and hard to escape!). For those of us who end up being a bit addicted to facebook and social media in general it can become important to take a little break in order to re-calibrate, and make space for bigger things.

But taking a break from facebook isn’t always easy. Earlier in the year when I had considered taking a break from facebook I wondered how I would do it. How would I know when the next homeschooling event was on? We were only newly moved to the area, so I was quite reliant on the facebook groups to meet new people and connect with homeschooling events. How will I update my blog / business’s facebook page? How would I keep up to date with other important things? How would I connect with friends? Eek!

Here’s how I did it: 

To solve most of these problems I simply made a second facebook account with no friends. With this new account I joined only the groups I desperately NEEDED to be part of.

Step 1: Log out of your current facebook account, and then create a new account.

Step 2: Choose a different profile picture (so the next step is less confusing), and make a status update that says something like “I’m taking a break from facebook, and this account is purely for keeping up to date with XYZ. Please do not contact me via this account or send me a friend request. You can contact me via [email protected] or 04….my phone number…”

Make sure it’s a public status update. Also, take a screen shot of this status and make it your cover photo, so it’s super clear for people.

Step 3: Make friends with your original facebook account, so that you can easily invite yourself to the pages you admin, or the groups you’re part of.

Step 4: Log out, and log back into your original facebook account (the ones with all the friends, and all the stuff). Accept your new friend request from yourself, and make yourself an admin of the pages you manage, and approve yourself to join the groups you need to be part of. You may need to contact a group admin and just explain what you’re doing, as a secondary account with no friends of a person who’s already part of the group is a bit sus! So just let them know that you’re taking a break from facebook, but still want to keep updated with what’s happening in the group so want to join again with your temporary account.

Step 5 (optional): Log back into your new account and check you’re part of the groups you need. Request to join them on your own if you need to.

Step 6: Deactivate your original account! Facebook hates this, and you have to just through quite a few hoops in order to deactivate it.

Now, this is just a deactivation – you can reactivate it at any time and keep your history and your friends and your photos and what not when you’re done re-setting. If you want to permanently delete it, well, that’s next level.

And there, you’re done! 

When I first did this it did not reduce the amount of times a day I went to check my facebook, but every time I went there, there was basically nothing to do or see there, and so the TIME I spent was very minimal. And boring. So basically I’ve been training my brain that facebook is a boring place. So hopefully, if I do go back, I will have learnt that 1. facebook isn’t fun and 2. I can make better use of my time.

Kids are awake, gotta run (to bed)!

Feature photo by Adam Jang on Unsplash

 

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