social networking sites continue to explode in popularity. according to nielsen:
- in december ’09 alone, over 300 million people logged onto facebook.
- on average, people spent 5.5 hours on facebook during december 2009 (a 201% increase from december 2008).
- over 300,000 businesses are now on facebook promoting their goods/services.
depending on your line of work, facebook may be unavoidable. but even if it is unavoidable, there’s good news: it doesn’t have to run your life. i have compiled a list of helpful hints to keep facebook from ruining your life.
how to minimize your time on facebook:
- choose your friends wisely. if you really want to limit your time on facebook, just limit the number of friends that you accept. remember, the less friends you accept, the less number of possible interactions that arise. convince yourself that you do not need to accept every friend request that shows up on your page. just because you went to the same high school with somebody doesn’t mean you need to become their “online friend” today. besides, apparently, the human mind can only handle 150 friends anyway.
- skip the applications/games. if you are on facebook to connect with friends, then get on facebook to connect with friends. you don’t need to spend your time joining the mafia, building a farm, or finding out which disney princess you are. however, if you would like facebook to be your online gaming platform… that is certainly up to you.
- remove all e-mail notifications. by turning off all notifications to your e-mail or mobile device, you remove facebook’s opportunity to interrupt your daily life at any moment. you also remove the urge to respond to every notification as it appears. to change these options, go to account settings and choose the “notifications” tab, there click “off” on all the e-mail notifications you don’t really need.
- hide unnecessary notifications from your newsfeed. if you’re not interested in someone’s or an application’s updates specifically, you can hide them from your newsfeed permanently. just hover over the update’s upper right corner and when you see the button “hide” appear, click to choose “hide this person’s updates” or “hide (whatever app) updates”. i use this on every application that appears in my newsfeed, on people who update way-too-often, and on people who constantly post negative status reports (i don’t need them bringing me down with them.)
- don’t facebook chat. among the most inefficient methods of communication in our world today stand internet chatting, texting, and morse code. and you don’t even have to initiate a facebook chat to get stuck in the middle of one… should a friend notice you are online. to go offline even when using facebook, click “chat,” “options,” and “go offline.”
- sync your social networking sites. if you are also a user of youtube, flickr, twitter, or etc., there are many applications/software that will sync them for you so that you do not need to upload/update things twice.
- only log-in once/day. certainly, this works only as well as your personal discipline allows. if once/day is still chewing up too much of your life, choose any frequency you desire.
- get drastic and limit your minutes. if personal discipline isn’t working for you, there are websites that will limit your time for you: minutesplease.com, for example.
- honorable mention: choose your photos wisely, choose your fan pages wisely, and become a friend of the “ignore” button.
these tips can be used for any user of facebook whether you are on for personal or commercial reasons.
oh, and don’t forget to become a fan of becoming minimalist on facebook.
I am seriously addicted to Facebook. If I have even just one minute I’m on there scrolling through rubbish. I’m on it so often that I see the same viral things at least fifteen times! I only seem to be able to stop when I have got to a section of Facebook that I have seen before! It’s awful. I need more will power to stay off it. It’s getting ridiculous.
I like reading through an article that can make people
think. Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!
I log into my small business page once a week and my personal page once in a blue moon. My life is so much better!
Unsubscribe from their email as well.
I just mass “unliked” about 90% of my liked pages. I also widdled my friends list down to only people who I want to talk/interact with on a regular basis. I unsubscribed to a big portion of my friend’s feeds, left groups, etc. The one thing I can’t figure out, is how to get rid of many of the apps, even though I don’t really use them. It has cut down on my facebook time!
Minimalism is a relief!
Great post. All of my FB friends are people I actually know and like. I log on about once a week. I didn’t start here. I had to whittle my “friends” list down to what it is today and commit to one hour per week at the most on FB. It can be a time sucking demon if you let it and I can’t be bothered with “friends” who just post updates that are essentially materialistic brags.
Or lecturing about their beliefs over and over again.
Never mind all the negative political or worldly events.
I was on facebook for a couple of years and decided to give it up. Haven’t been on it for months and don’t miss it.
I avoided Facebook for years, then decided I wanted to get in touch with long-lost friends. It has been great for that. However, it has become addictive and intrusive to the point of silly (I don’t do the games though), and I have hundreds of friends, some of whom I would barely know if I passed them in the street. Rather than ‘un-friending’ them, I have set strict limits on my privacy, so only a handful of close, trusted friends can see anything more than my basic profile, unless I post on their wall or comment on their photos. It has definitely helped cut down the time I spend on there, and I feel less paranoid about what I am putting out there for weirdos to see, or advertisers to try and use.
If I go any step further it would probably be to start un-friending people that I don’t really communicate with. Can’t really imagine why I agreed to be friends with some of them in the first place, since we were never friends back in school or whatever! Not that I hate them or anything, but…well, we just aren’t “friends”!
You never know if your information will be misunderstood or used against you.