I had already made plans to get off social media until after the election. I like my friends and family and didn’t want the politics of the day to damage our relationship. Three events occurred to both solidify my plans and make it easier. The first is I got a new phone as the old one was several years old and I could give it to my wife to replace hers which has a cracked screen. The next was a report that Facebook was using the phone number I had given it to secure my account. (Two Factor Authentication) and giving it to advertisers so they could target me. That was another betrayal of trust and weakens security of the internet. The third was that Facebook itself was hacked and at a minimum 50 million accounts were affected. I still log onto to update the Business Page on Facebook and some minor maintenance of that page. Before I left Facebook for this hiatus I did download my entire Facebook History because in the end I might decide to delete my account.
The new phone is seductive from the way it feels to its elegant design; you want to hold it in your hand. So case ordered because I can’t go around all day holding my phone. Before I transitioned to the new phone I had backed everything up to the cloud and set up the new phone as a new phone. I downloaded the contacts and calendars and from there I am starting over with a clean slate. To date I’ve downloaded 4 apps. WordPress to manage the website. Fitbit to keep track of my steps and weight. ESPN because my son begged me so he can follow the football scores. Firefox Focus a privacy centric edition of the Firefox browser. I am sure I will add more in the future but for now nothing much beyond what the phone already provides. Even with the native phone apps, the way the phone works is customizable so I went through each app and the settings to minimize the ways the phone will interrupt me or track me.
At this point you may be wondering what I will be doing with my time since I am not on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media. According to my Fitbit, I have had the best week of sleep since I was on vacation in June. This has greatly improved my mood and productivity. I am also spending it doing more research and getting a small backlog of minor projects at the office done. I also have more time for writing.
My current plan is to resume using Social Media on December 2nd, the 1st day of Advent and the 1st day of Hanukkah. I shall spend the time before then thinking about how I used Social Media in the past and how best to use it in the future to where it is something that benefits me.