December was the most productive month of our lives. Forty-three days ago we began our one-month stint away from Facebook. Frustrated with our lack of productivity, we decided on Dec. 2 during lunch to block our Facebooks until December break.
At first, giving up Facebook for nearly a month seemed like an overly ambitious, rather naïve goal. Everyone we talked to laughed, scoffed or shook their heads doubtfully. Still, we decided to follow through with our plan.
Now, we know what you’re probably thinking: “Wow! You have a lot of will power!”
Well, to be honest, we didn’t. We knew ourselves well enough to know that changing each other’s passwords would not stop us from clicking on the ever-so-tempting “Forgot your password?” link on the top right corner of our Facebook screen, making our passwords just one click away. We decided to change the e-mail addresses on each other’s accounts too; only then would our plan work.
Our last time logging on to Facebook before we changed our passwords was difficult.
The first few days without Facebook, however, were rougher. For Rachel, checking e-mail and answering the exhilarating SAT Question of the Day replaced her habitual Facebook breaks. Meryl initially found herself less focused than before and continually tried to sign into her Facebook account to no avail.
After a week, Meryl was ready to quit. She called Rachel on the phone to ask plead for her password, more than ready to admit defeat. But Rachel wouldn’t budge. She refused to give Meryl the password, telling her that the first week would be tough and that afterward she would be fine.
Rachel was right. Progressively, our obscure homework breaks became less and less appealing until the thought of going on Facebook didn’t even cross our minds. We became more determined do our homework as efficiently as possible. Without the constant status updates and new photo albums, we became much more focused on our schoolwork.
Of course, Facebook does not have only negative aspects; not having access to Facebook did have its obvious downsides. Facebook had been our primary means of communication, after all.
Without it, we found ourselves in the dark about the newest relationships, photos and posts that we would stalk (we mean, stumble upon) every time we’d log on. We could no longer laugh along with the crowd at that hilarious video posted on someone’s wall, or “like” the status that complained about that test we had.
When we think about this, we have to laugh. The two of us were genuinely worried that we were missing out without Facebook, and that really goes to show how much the site has taken over our lives.
We had become so used to looking at that friendly blue-and-white schemed screen, clicking on those links and scrolling through those pages that without them, we simply felt lost. If you had seen us talking to one another about how we felt like we had nothing to do anymore, you probably would’ve laughed, too.
In the end, the best feeling wasn’t looking at the wall posts (thanks Olivia and Olivia), invitations and messages that had accumulated over our leave of absence. The best feeling wasn’t looking back at our Facebook statuses littered with cynical comments including “goooooooood luck,” “I’ll give you $5 if you succeed” and “I’d like to see how long this lasts.”
The best feeling was realizing that we had accomplished our goal and didn’t need Facebook to run our lives anymore. We didn’t care about making a point. All we wanted to do was spend less time on Facebook and more time on schoolwork, and we did that.
Still, we’re happy to recognize those of you who doubted us. So, to Laura, thank you for the good luck. We needed it. To Olivia, we hope you saw how long this lasted. And to Max, we want our five dollars.
