7-Day, 5-Minute Facebook Challenge - How Well Did I Do?

October 26, 2015

Last week, I decided that I would take on a bit of a challenge to see how well I could do.  Here, let me refresh your memory.

So this is something that I like to call the 7-Day, 5-Minute Facebook Challenge.  And the idea behind this challenge was to cut back on my usage of social media.  I think that we have all had moments in which we get blown away by how much of the day that we spend on computers, smartphones, and cell phones, and I wanted to take this challenge to prove to myself that I could live without social media.

My initial goal was to go on Facebook for five minutes each day for seven days, and that was all that I would do.

I failed miserably.

It's not as though I didn't try to do it though.  I had every intention to follow through with my plan.  But it was all in the timing.

You see, I happened to pick the same week that our Canadian elections were being held.  Couple that with the fact that a lot of my Facebook friends were celebrating birthdays that week, and well...let's put it this way.  It is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

But do I consider this little exercise a complete failure?  Absolutely not.  Even though I didn't stick by the rules, my social media usage went way down as a result!  Rather than spend hours on the computer wasting time, I only spent minutes, and focused my time on other things.  It was such a freeing experience, let me tell you.

And on top of all that, I found that I was happier when I was away from it!  No longer did I get caught up in Facebook drama, or get buried in a whole bunch of memes that I had seen a thousand times, or get bombarded with game requests.  It was nice to not have to deal with all of that.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think that social media has its merits.  It's a great way to get connected with the world and a wonderful platform to share your thoughts with like-minded people.  But at the same time, I think most of us in general tend to spend too much time on these platforms.  It's not good to have too much of anything, and I wanted to see if I could take on the 7-Day, 5-Minute Facebook Challenge to at the very least see if I could cut back on social media.

It may not have worked the way that I wanted it to work, but at the same time, I think it was a success in that I did do what I wanted to do.

That said...I probably should have made it a 7-Day, 30-Minute challenge.