A few months back I decided to deactivate my Facebook account as part of an experiment to see if I could survive without it for two weeks. I usually spend an average of 3 to 4 hours on Facebook, just checking people’s profiles and doing general catching up, so the prospect of not being able to do that was somewhat weird and exciting. Weird because I didn’t know how I would catch up with friends and I thought I would feel left out. Exciting because I immediately started to think of the many things I could do with the extra time; read books, pay more attention to my blog and focus on sending CVs!

Today I complete the two week experiment and I have to say the end result was totally surprising! Although I did all the things I mentioned above, I still saw myself spending time on all sorts of websites and of course Twitter. However the big difference was that I was just reading articles and fun things whereas with Facebook I would be following what other people where up to and - subconsciously - comparing their lives with mine (e.g ‘I wish I went to that party!’ , ‘Why does he get to do that and not me?’). Stupid thoughts, I have to agree, but these are things we sometimes are not in control of. This time off helped me meditate on the things that are important in my life - so it was a kind of soul-searching.

Taking a Facebook break has showed me how dependent I am sometimes to other people’s actions or thoughts. What matters in the end is what you do to improve your live or the lives of others, right?

The dilemma now is that I would be quite happy to stay out of Facebook forever, but unfortunately we in our society are way too attached in the social network - which means if you’re not on Facebook then you don’t exist. I guess I will come back to it eventually, but this time hopefully wiser and with less spare time on my hands: after all I have a book, a blog and a whole bunch of job applications to attend to.