I am sure that many of you would have started noticing how much time Facebook consumes in your day. You log-on to the website and the next you know, you are scrolling through an endless parade of memes and cat pics. Once in a while, you get that controversial topic or that hyped subject that you have been very interested into recently and you open the link to watch the content, only to come back to Facebook again. This keeps going on and on, and in the end, you find that you have lost many a minutes on this Facebook session.
These sessions happen multiple times a day, whenever you have a leeway, and thus end up consuming around 2–3 hrs of your productive time.
I, in fact, suffer from a very crazy syndrome in which once when I go to Facebook and realise that I have spent a lot of time there, I quit it, and then unable to think what to do next, go back to Facebook again. I call it the “Facebook Boomerang effect”.
Why is Facebook so involving?
Facebook cumulates your data from all around the Internet, in fact even from your phone. There is a big network of user data and advertisers which allows big advertising firms like Facebook and Google to show users exactly the content they want to see. This can be just a normal post or an advertisement. Either work, as the main aim of Facebook is to make you stay as long as possible on their platform. This creates more interactions, more viewed content and thus more sales and user data collection.
So how to get past it?
I tend to follow meme and social entertainment pages on Facebook a lot, and thus most of my Facebook feed generally consisted of those types of items. I used to enjoy them, and I found them entertaining but deep within I always knew that this was wasting my time. There was always this guilt feeling.
So what changed?
Well, this happened unintentionally but recently I got interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchains. I even wanted to start investing in some. So to learn more about that, I thought maybe I should become a part of some Facebook groups. I applied to 2–3 groups and soon became a part.
But something amazing happened? I noticed that the group was always filled with quality content and I was actually feeling better after consuming it. I started interacting with more and more of those posts, and guess what, as a result, Facebook algorithm started suggesting me more and more of those posts in my timeline.
So, right now, almost 50% of the top of my timeline is filled with quality cryptocurrency posts and discussions. For the first time in my life, I feel thankful to Facebook for creating such a platform, which can be used for such quality discussions with individuals from all around the world.
I know, one may use HackerNews or Reddit for the same, but those places are filled with trolls, and since all the users are anonymous there, it really gets hard to maintain a humane connection with them. But Facebook is different, almost all of the members I find in these groups are “real” people with good intentions. This makes up for a very healthy platform for discussions.
I have started joining more and more groups now. My policy for joining groups is as follows-
- Strict moderation policies
- A survey/question form before joining the group — This indicates that group is very selective about taking its members, which is nice since trollers and advertisers won’t go through the trouble of joining the group.
- A website (if possible)
I am sure that following these criteria, anyone can filter out which groups to join and which not.
Join only those groups whose topics and interests align with those of yours, and you will soon start enjoying Facebook, just like me.
This article was first published on my Medium page.