Should be. Undoubtedly will not be.
After less than an hour I was so bored that I decided it would be a good idea to rearrange my entire bedroom. Unfortunately for me I've never actually moved a double bed before, and my bed has two mattresses so my room ended up looking like, to quote a friend of mine "fortification for a zombie apocalypse".
I had my wardrobe barricading the window and one of my mattresses barricading the door, so I would definitely have been safe if an army of the undead had decided to attack my little corner of the world.
Luckily my bedroom is now back to looking like a bedroom, and I can actually get out again.
But I digress, my not using Facebook is actually starting to drive me a little mad. I've deleted the apps off both my phone and laptop to deter me from using it, but I still continuously pick up my phone, then knowing I'm only doing it to check Facebook I put it down again. I've done 3 or 4 times in the last 20 minutes. I'm beginning to think that I need a life.
This has, however, bought me to an entirely new realisation. How much we now rely on social media.
I really only use Facebook, and obviously Blogger. I have twitter account, but I very rarely use it, and I have an Instagram account, but that gets used even less because there is not yet an Instagram app for Windows Phone, or for Windows 8.1 on my laptop. So I don't really use as much social media as most people I know, but I know I use Facebook enough to make up for not using the others.
Mostly I use Facebook to keep in contact with people, sometimes it easier to sit at my laptop and type out a Facebook message than it is to try and type out a message on my phone. Especially if it's a long message, and I have a habit of sending a lot of those!
I use Facebook to share my photos of James, and photos of me, I do like to take the odd selfie! I use it to rant and rave and share song lyrics of whatever I'm listening to. Basically I use Facebook a lot.
But I guess I'm not the only one.
I mean really, how many of you could actually easily not use Facebook for a week? Or Twitter? Or Instagram? How many of us would actually cope well in a world without social media? Or internet at all for that matter?
We live in a world where most of the time we rely on the internet, whether it be for research, or interacting with each other, or even meeting new people. The internet is both our best friend and our worst enemy at the same time.
I remember when I was doing my GCSEs I didn't actually have a computer at home. All of my work was handwritten and my research came from actual text books, rather than the internet. When I started my A-levels I had a laptop, so my work was typed, but we didn't have wireless internet at home, so again my research was done using books, and maybe a little computer time while I was at school. Now I'd like to point out that this really wasn't all that long ago, maybe 5, 6 years ago. So I was actually a little bit strange among my peers. However, if I was to do this research now it would be solely done on the internet, because there is so much more information and it is much easier to access. Personally I would still prefer to do my research from books, but it is really impractical.
I also remember when I first started school, and I didn't have a mobile phone, or the internet, so if I wanted to make friends I actually had to talk to people. The closest thing we had to social media was passing notes in class. We actually went out on a Saturday and hung out, did things that children do. I didn't actually have a phone until I was about 14, so there was never any texting people or anything like that. I actually had to make conversation. I dislike people, therefore making conversation never really appealed to me, and neither did making friends, but I had a few, people that I actually liked and didn't mind hanging out with.
The first social media site I ever used was Myspace (does anyone else actually remember that?) and I started using it about a year after most of my friends, I was always a bit of a late starter! I remember rarely using it, in fact I think the only time I ever used it was when I was at school. I definitely didn't use it to the extent that my friends did. I actually can't remember all that much about using Myspace, so it obviously didn't make that much of an impact on me.
I started using Facebook about a year after my friends again, and at first I rarely used it. I actually don't remember when I transitioned into using Facebook all the time, but eventually I did. It was mostly only to talk to my friends, because I had this really bad habit of never having texts. (This was back in the day when everyone had pay as you go phones). Once I actually had a phone capable of using the internet, I found myself on Facebook a lot. Although I'd go through phases where I'd be checking it every five minutes for a couple of days and then I wouldn't check it for a week. Gradually the amount of time I spent not checking it got less and less until it was constantly open on my phone. Apparently Facebook is incredibly addictive. Although I had to stop using it before I realised this! In the last 3 or 4 years I've gone through short phases of not using it. The longest of these was the entire time of my pregnancy, but as soon as James was born I went straight onto Facebook to announce the happy news to everyone. And since then I just use it constantly. So now I'm determined to stop.
I've done alright so far, I have been very tempted to go onto Facebook, I've found myself picking up my phone and typing in the web address before remembering I'm supposed to be staying off it and closing the window before it loads.
I don't think I've ever been so determined to successfully give up something before, and I'm not really sure whether I'm trying to prove a point to myself or to someone else.
But seriously, try it out, see how long you can last without social media, would definitely make for a fun experiment and you might be surprised how much you get done without it!
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