Let me start by saying that when I put my mind to something, anything…I go all out. It’s just how I’m wired and who I am. So August 19, 2007 when this new website fell into my radar called facebook, I joined.

In those days few of my friends were on and I was still trying to figure out what the idea was all about. Was it another MySpace? I never really got into MySpace. Was it a “social” LinkedIn?

A month into my new Facebook membership I deactivated for a bit since I still didn’t get the point of Facebook, but that quickly changed when more and more people caught on. At some point I started feeling “left out” so I reactivated.

Fast forward 5 years, 873 friends and dozens of Facebook pages later I somehow became known as the “Queen” of facebook or in more unflattering terms “addicted” to facebook.

My first 2 years on facebook I was learning the ropes. I’d post here and there, share some family pictures….facebook was more personal with only 100 or so friends. Eventually I’d come across an old high school name or someone from college. It would be fun to see what they were up to. It was in 2008 when I did “Couture for a Cause Kids” when I got my first taste of the power of Facebook for promotion. It felt great utilizing this new tool to do good. The moment in time when the power of FB came to a massive head for me was in 2010 during the Ilan Tocker story. There is no doubt that without FB’s ability to generate the buzz, the prayers, the challah baking, the cookbook sales, the ticket sales for event etc. the story would be different. Not saying it saved him, but it would be a different story.

Through the years I found I had a nack for posting insights, humor and sarcastic observations and I went with it at full force. It helped that I’d start running into FB friends all over who went out of their way to tell me they enjoy my posts. I always loved writing so I started FB blogging here and there and it always amazed me when people actually read, commented and enjoyed. I began to feel like a quasi FB celebrity in my own little world and I felt pressure to keep being witty and interesting.

Through trial and error I started developing my own FB rules.
1) I limited personal pictures of my family. I believe that started after the Leiby tragedy.
2) I never posted pictures of others unless I knew 100% it was ok with them. I never posted pictures of other children.
3) I only accepted friendships with people I knew or who had so many mutual friends that I had to know. That is why in 5 years I only amassed 870 friends. As Queen of facebook I could’ve collected far more but I wanted to know who my friends were.
4) I learned the privacy setting very fast and limited quite a few of my 800 friends so they saw nothing but my name. I had reasons for each one.
5) I viewed FB as a great business tool and plugged my business at every opportunity but I also knew that if it was all business I’d get boring pretty fast.

Finally

5) My posts were NEVER allowed to be personal, stupid, boring, annoying. I worked hard to be as entertaining without giving away anything real…unless it was my political view or opinion about something that I thought was ludicrous. Then it’s fair game.

From a business perspective, I added FB and social media to my services. Not a week went by without at least one business lead from FB. I began helping people with Pages and at my peek I was managing over 30 pages. There was no greater feeling than helping businesses amass great numbers of fans and watching formerly FB clueless owners get into it. Almost all my clients attributed an increase in awareness and sales thanks to FB.

So my FB story sounds like quite a success story…I figured out how to utilize this great tool to entertain, to showcase my writing, to spread good deeds and increase my bottom line. I met some incredible people (you know who you are) I otherwise would never have met. Those people inspired and enhanced my world in many ways, and for that I am grateful. Other than a few “hecklers” who enjoyed teasing me about being addicted, most of which clearly spent a lot of time stalking and not posting…what could be bad?

Sometimes in life you have to come to your own realizations. We know this from our own childhoods when our annoying parents doled out advice that we never took. We thought we knew better until one day we matured enough to realize that maybe Mom knew what she was talking about. Perhaps it was that article that put the bug in my head. It connected facebook activism with narcissism. Am I narcissistic? I asked myself. Sure I enjoy acceptance, attention, acknowledgement…but who doesn’t. And if I do have slight narcissistic tendencies…don’t many who are successful have those qualities. It bothered me but not enough to take a step back. I figured if I’m so narcissistic, I was doing a great job using it for good.

The next Aha! moment came when a friend who has almost 2K FB friends decided to deactivate her account. I was one of the select few in her life who she texted to tell me she was deactivating so that I don’t think she G-d forbid defriended me. (A highly insulting offense in our new world)

I called her right after and what she said to me was very insightful. Though at that moment I wasn’t ready to jump in with her, I respected her choice and wished her luck. In a nutshell, she said she found that while FB gave her this sense of community and connectiveness, it was replacing real life connections she could have been cultivating. She found that by posting her every which activity and event, her friends would take it for granted that they knew what was up…so they’d call less, ask less and as a result connect less. They felt they knew everything so why bother, thus she was losing out on real life communication. She also felt FB was stopping her from working out, from going out, from living real life. Though her real life was full, she had just gotten engaged, she was always involved in philanthropy…she only imagined how much more it could be if she didn’t allow FB to suck her in a few hours a day. She pointed out something else that I found profound. Mark Zuckerberg, KING of Facebook got hitched. How many attended his wedding? Maybe 100. Now you try and make a simcha for only 100 people….impossible! But Mark, the man who has the most “friends” in the universe was somehow able to mine his list down to 100. My friend pointed out that while he is making billions off the concept of “helping you share and connect with the people in your life” at the end of the day only 100 people between him and his new wife really counted.

I hear you, I said. But I got it under control. I use it for business and to entertain and I go to the gym, I am involved with so much. It’s not an issue for me.

But seeds were planted and throughout the next few weeks I began to be more aware of how much time I spent looking at my newsfeed and how much time I spent reading various articles and posts because of FB. I noticed I would check FB often throughout the day, lost in my iphone while real life including my kids were all but ignored. Any time I was bored…FB to the rescue. During those dead moments, I never allowed myself to just sit and read a magazine, call a friend or converse with somone on line at the supermarket. While I did homework with my kids I simultaneously was on FB, laughing at a witty post, responding. My attention was always lost in cyberspace and not in the here and now. I’d start a job and find myself wasting 30 minutes or more on FB. It meant I would then need to work late into the night. I was literally losing sleep over FB.

I remember how great it felt to have hundreds of FB Happy Birthday wishes from everyone I knew on FB back in March. But then I remembered how much better the texts felt and even more so the phone calls. Nothing can replace live interaction. One needs to make eye contact, hear the vocal tones, see the body language. FB and even texts don’t cut it.

In the month that my friend got off of FB I think I spoke and saw her more than I did all year. I too was guilty of taking it for granted that I knew everything that was going on in her life. I superficially felt like I saw her daily and spoke to her when she was on FB. But the past month I actually had to call her, even meet up with her in order to catch up and nothing can replace that.

And so I woke up one morning and decided that the “Queen” needs a break. Sometimes, like when dieting, you need to go extreme inorder to get back to the middle. For me to really learn how to utilize FB as a great business tool, promotional tool and occasional personal tool without replacing or affecting my real live life, I need to lay off the FB.

I look forward to coming up with other ways to fill those “boredom” moments, even if it means observing my surroundings a bit more. I look forward to getting lost online working instead of reading other peoples updates. And I look forward to sharing my day-to-day foibles and experiences with my friends via phone or in person and not broadcasted for all to see. Summer is here and it’s a great time to develop new habits. This summer I hope to enjoy the world outside of my iphone and imac a bit more, knowing that like chocolate or ice cream, the cyberworld is not going anywhere, but like dieting BALANCE is everything.

So I’m not cutting out FB for life….God knows me and MLWDESIGN owes FB quite a lot. I’ll be back when I am ready.

For now I’m on a personal NO FB diet. It’s not easy but I know the results will be worth it..

Jun 17, 2012 / Blog

Author - mlwdesign comments - 0

Copyright 2018 mlwdesign.com