Facebook used to be a large part of my life. After meeting someone new, I would instantly send them a friend request. Once my friends list passed 1,000 I could not get off of Facebook. What if those two people in my Biology 101 class started dating? What happened at Jessica's birthday party? Where was everyone going on Spring Break? I didn't want to be the last to know.
During graduate school, I finally decided that it was okay to let some of my facebook friends go. In fact, I let them all go. If I did not see you at my Grandma's during the holiday season, you were deleted. My friend list dropped to under 150. I had deleted over 1,000 "friends" and about 100 of my actual, real friends. My newsfeed was filled with my aunt wishing everyone a Happy Easter and my little cousin's posting pictures of dogs and football scores.
It got so boring that I deactived my account for a while. (No offense, family.)
Eventually, I gave in and started adding back my real life friends. I missed seeing their life updates. But, in all honestly, I missed their updates before when they were mixed in with 1000+ people who I only shared one memory with and hadn't seen since 3rd grade.
Now, my mother has more Facebook friends than me.
I still feel guilty and add a few people who are beyond my close friend tier, but they never show up in my newsfeed. If you are reading this and I haven't accepted your friend request, please know that you are not alone.
I can't go back to spending hours on Facebook. I don't care as much about parties or relationships or who has the newest baby.
But the real issue is that I have a new FOMO thing. (Fear of missing out, for those of you who haven't heard this acronym.)
It's the 258 blog posts in my RSS feed that I refuse to delete. What if there is a post about how to create the perfect life? Or how to become a nicer person? Or how to grow to like children?
Does your FOMO thing morph as you get older?
How do you deal with FOMO?
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