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articles, Facebook, Facebook Addiction, networking websites, Online Social Networking, Social Media Articles, Social Media Uses
For over a month, I happily stuck to my Facebook limitation commitment and enjoyed the benefits. Then, on my mother’s birthday, which was this past Tuesday, I slipped. I sent her an e-card and bought her a gift, but I also wanted to post a birthday message on her Facebook wall.
I logged on with the best intentions: 1)quickly go to her page, 2)post a birthday message, and then 3)log off. As you can probably guess by now, I had a detour.
Once I logged in, I saw that my stepfather had already posted a very lovely message to her, so of course, I had to read and “like” it. Then, after I scrolled down to “like” the message a subsequent post caught my eye. I was so excited by this that I immediately posted it to my wall with a comment and also commented on the original post. Then, I saw that some people had private messaged me and since I was already on Facebook I decided to respond to them. What was supposed to have taken a few minutes took me about 15.
What’s worse, is that the next day, I logged in again to check the ongoing conversations about the post I saw the day before. However, once I did, I noticed that more than one of my friends had caught me logging in when it wasn’t Sunday and told me to “make like a banana”.
The next day, I had a revelation: If I want to contact my friends who live far away from me, I can call them on the phone! I called a friend whose voice I haven’t heard in months. We had a great conversation and I put down the phone not only feeling connected, but having a better understanding of how things are going for her (and her for me) than if I had posted to her wall.
There are 2 lessons here:
- Your friends on Facebook will keep you accountable to your Facebook limitation pledge; and
- I need a better long-distance phone plan.