I Have Reinstalled Facebook for The 8th Time
By: Chau Trieu
Tags: Productivity, Social Media, Social Media Addiction, Procrastination, Facebook

I Have Reinstalled Facebook for The 8th Time

Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash

I am one of the 1.73 billion Facebook users who visit the site every day and spend at least an hour on the app. Facebook is the app I log in to whenever I’m bored, uninspired, in between breaks, or about to go to bed. For the longest time, it has been my tool of procrastination.

I have tried so many times deleting Facebook off my phone. The first time was two years ago.

It was near my final exam and I wanted to focus. After removing the app, I realized how much free time I had. So in the midst of preparing for my exam, I wrote my first article for Medium, which is titled How Leaving Facebook Changed My Life for The Better.

It took me this long to come clean that about a week after that post, I reinstalled the Facebook app. I deleted Facebook with the purpose of stopping procrastination and reducing social media addiction many times afterward, only to download it again a few days later.

There are three reasons why I kept coming back and fort:

First, I lived far away from my parents and international calls were super expensive. They didn’t use WhatsApp, I didn’t and couldn’t use Zalo (the equivalent of WhatsApp in Vietnam) so the only way I could update my parents with my daily life is through Facebook Messenger.

Second, I follow lots of news pages on Facebook where they update daily about matters I care about. Scrolling down their timeline saves me from visiting various news outlets, which is super convenient.

Third, my friends use Facebook a lot. I would like to be updated about their life once in a while and shoot them some casual messages whenever I feel like catching up.

These are all good reasons. Facebook does bring me lots of benefits. The one thing that made me wanted to delete Facebook in the first place was my incessant scrolling, and that’s up to me to change.

So after the 8th time, I decided to not remove the app anymore but to change my usage behavior.

Users are in charge of using their social media

Social media honestly is revolutionary. Being able to connect with friends and family from thousands of kilometers away in just seconds is amazing. Being informed about what is going on around the world with a pocket-sized device is life-changing.

Then, we turn ourselves into our phone’s prisoners and get trapped in it voluntarily for about 2.4 hours a day, excluding the time when our mind think about what is happening online when we are off.

It was not Facebook’s fault that I procrastinated a lot. It was my will and determination. It was because I gave in to the temptation. I couldn’t identify my top priority which was to finish my homework so I did not have to pull an all-nighter one day before the deadline.

I always have a choice.

I can choose to get off the computer or put down my phone and open the Word document to begin writing my paper.

I can choose to check the timeline of only a few informative pages to stay updated and close the app.

I can choose to only follow positive and creative accounts that inspire me to generate more ideas.

I can choose to not engage in any status or comment that ignites a fight or gives off a toxic vibe.

I can choose not to be imprisoned by that small screen all day every day.

If I want serious change, it is easier, to begin with myself.

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