Yeah I can't tell how much I loved facebook. Well, actually it's not love, it's more like a habit. It's like a place I would 99% click to when I have nothing to do and....actually I feel stupid by doing so. Why? Simply because, all the news feed were from all my friends. I mean ALL. The more friends I have in facebook, the more diverse information will automatically pop up in my news feed. Well, to be honest, we don't need to know what Mr X and Miss Y eats every morning or what they did every moment, whether they are playing with cats, eating desserts....=.= That is simply too much. We all have our own lives to live and how can we be concerned about 500+ friend's lives every day? Some people were even posting at the rate of every 5 minutes per post. I would need to have at least 48 hours a day to browse through all the events taking place in the world. In facebook, we more or less can't decide what kind of information we want to know. Most of us just 'receive' like a dustbin of what your friends tell u or what the public / facebook want u to know. Which is why I feel Stupid. Hence, it has been long time ago since I last scroll down to look at those news feeds. Unless I was really bored to death.
But then....let's admit it, Facebook must have its functionalities which enables it to exist till today. In an era when the thing almosteveryone will log on to across the countries is the social network, u need this to keep in touch with those that appeared in your past before, and those that u don't even have their phone number in your mobile. More to this, funny to say, sometimes we even need facebook for some formal conversations, creating an event or organisng a meeting. It has been so convenient that emails have gradually been phased out. (Except for those very formal academic stuff or personal preference.)
Back to the topic, afterall, Facebook is just a tool, and it really depends on how we use it. We can either be the master of it and use it for our convenience, or become a slave which could not pull ourselves off from the forever entertaining world provided by facebook. You see, Fb is so smart. It makes us feel entertained without putting much effort. It makes us and our friends providing enough entertainment to one another, creating a positive loop that goes on and on.
Then, what can we do to wisely utilise this social network? Perhaps for me, one of the thing I do is STOP scrolling down and browse every news feed every now and then. If I have a choice, I wouldn't have put news feed as the main page of Fb but rather my close friends' list. Of course it is impossible to isolate at all from what's happening out there. Sometimes we do need to know sth from other's point of view. But in terms of accuracy of the news, most of the times they are exaggerated; In terms of broadness of the topics, it mainly depends on how many people posted it. And sometimes people are crazily interested in those meaningless videos/articles And they post it all out....So, browsing news feed to get your news updated, I wouldn't say it's a wise choice.
Second is to ask myself what I really want from Facebook. I knew that one of the main reasons I can't help clicking facebook is because I am concerned with my close friends' lives as well as those formal conversations going on between my friends. So, I put those friends I appreciate into my close friends' list and I receive notifications from what they posted. Which most of the times is sufficient enough for me to keep myself updated.
The third thing, also the most important one, is again asking myself what kind of information I wanna know from facebook. Decide it. You know, as a person like me who will check Facebook every day, I am likely to get a huge influence from the facebook content in the long run. Hence, it is really important that I ( and I mean all of us) decide what kind of influence you want to get out of it. Without realising this, we will end up being a DBKL (rubbish collection service in KL) of all the rubbish information in facebook. As for me, I realy don't wanna be like this. So, choose our source of influence and information wisely.
Sometimes, and it's getting more prominent now, we are constantly getting exaggerated or false piece of information circulating in the network. Or some really negative comments. Or something that will do us no good but we still spend 5 minutes watching them. So, if we know we can't get away from Facebook, why not creating some fresh 'input source' for ourselves. Decide what u will like to get, search for it in facebook and "like" those pages. As for me, I am really interested in the articles about life, philosophy and Buddhism, so I deliberately like/subscribe to those pages that I like. And for some friends whom I know have been posting meaningful articles/sources, I add them into my close friends' list. And then I get notifications from the input sources that I choose. And in this way, I ensure myself receiving postive influence/ input whenever I decide to have a "chill-out" session when browsing facebook. I am literally inserting Positive energy into my life even during my entertainment time, which makes me feel so good when playing facebook. In other words, I have helped myself filtering out unnecessary information, retaining those important and beneficial for me.
A lot of us too can do it! Fully utilise the "like the page" option, choose something apart from your idols, entertainment news to "like". It can be an inspirational page (gives you a good start in the morning), motivational quotes, some official page with genuine news you want to know...the ocean of knowledge is vast. And one important thing is, don't simply post whatever stuff that you really like because not everyone will love it. Sometimes I can't help but hiding those friends who constantly post how they feel,what they eat, what they watch, and those who like to post rubbish information Every-single-day. Sorry, my brain is too small for them. Of course we need a way to express out our thoughts or feelings, but things go bad when they are too much.
Here's my way to dealing with Facebook. Facebook too can bring a lot of happiness to us but first of all we have to decide what kind of happiness we want to get from it. Facebook is great when you enjoy it moderately! Haha.
