Last July I decided to step off the Facebook merry-go-round for an unspecified length of time. I can’t say there was any singular motivation do so. Instead, it was a combination of factors. For one, I found myself obsessing way too much about Facebook posting, and probably sharing too much info about myself. In any case, I felt I had to get some distance from Zuck & Crew.

Before I get to the benefits of a withdrawal period from Facebook and other social media, and what I learned in the process of disconnecting and eventually reconnecting, allow me share the story of how I got hooked on Facebook in the first place.

In 2006, I was invited to join Facebook by some of my students at UNSW. At that time, Facebook was new, and you had to be a member of a university to join, as I recall. Also, this was before the age of smart phones and iPads, and the only way to get on Facebook was on one’s computer.

For the first few years, I would occasionally post on Facebook and check others’ posts as the platform developed. Over the years, more and more people joined and connected and there were more reasons to use Facebook. It was fun to reconnect with old friends and classmates who I hadn’t seen or heard from in years if not decades. But my relationship with Facebook was still rather casual and distant, limited to occasional posts and checking the feed now and then.

Then in 2015, a few things happened that deepened my relationship with Facebook. After years of paying very little attention to the platform, I started posting more frequently. The first catalyst was the publication of our book Shanghai Nightscapes. We wanted to get the word out about our new book. We created a book page to push news about it and about talks we were giving. Then, soon after the publication of our book, I moved to Kunshan, where I’ve been living and working ever since (I still spend weekends in Shanghai). Living alone in Kunshan five days a week drew me even deeper into the world of Facebook. I also used the platform to share my blog posts and to share info and news about my other publications and films.

As more people joined and used Facebook more frequently, I found myself connecting to all sorts of people, including colleagues of mine in Asian Studies, old friends, long-lost companions, relatives, and so forth. Most of these people are in the USA, Europe, and other places around the world. Facebook was a handy connect-all.

Over the next few years, I continued to post frequently, sometimes several times a day. This was aided and abetted by my iPhone and iPad, which had the Facebook app on them. Every time I scanned my apps, I’d see the blue Facebook button with a red circle with a number in it, indicating some sort of activity. What genius behind this little red circle! It becomes an addiction, the need to press the button when you see that red dot. Facebook intentionally designed the app with a lot more functionality than getting on the website, so you develop a need to use it over time. That plus an addiction creates a vicious cycle of need to feed and read.

Not only did this happen with me. I saw it happening with all sorts of folks on my Facebook feed. There was this addictive tendency to post whatever thought or activity or reaction you were having at the moment. And it gets very repetitive. What one notices over time (and I am as guilty of this as anybody else) is the endless, obsessive repetition of certain themes in people’s Facebook posts. Eventually you become jaded or inured to the repetitive nature of the posts.

And what was driving all this was our addiction to a little blue square and a smaller red circle with numbers on it.  Long and short: I was addicted, and so were most of my Facebook friends. It became an endless and unquenchable thirst to feed the Facebook machine. All of this was rattling around in my head last July when I chose to pull the plug on Facebook for a while. Over the next month or two, a few friends noticed my absence and wrote me, some with concern, the Great Firewall being on some minds. Meanwhile, Facebook went merrily on its way, and people kept chugging away at it, feeding its bottomless stomach with our personal obsessions.

So what happened to me when I got off the Facebook carousel?

Once I made the decision to disconnect, I didn’t look back. I suspended my own account, and I took all the Facebook apps off my devices. I also took off the Linked-In apps (those are really the only two social media I was using). Very quickly, the urge to post anything and everything dissipated. I found myself blissfully free of the need to take photos with my iPhone and immediately upload them to Facebook. I no longer felt the desire to share my thoughts or my reactions to what I was reading or watching with the Facebook world.

Another thing that happened was that I found myself far less bothered and disturbed by the daily news cycles. I continued to follow the news via my subscription to the New York Times, and through podcasts such as NPR or BBC newscasts. (I live in China but don’t read Chinese media--not that I’m unable to do so, but I’ve never developed the habit. Most of my China news comes from international sources, which have their own biases, but I digress.) Anyhow, I found myself reacting more dispassionately to the news of the day, the week, the month, or the year.

Perhaps it helped that a certain attention-mongering President was no longer in office, and his successor operates in a more quiet and resolute manner. Regardless of the reasons, I felt happier not being bombarded by the fears and the waves of negativity expressed by my Facebook friends over every bit of bad news in the cycle. I was more connected to my immediate surroundings, and it felt like the burdens of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.

Nor did I feel the compelling desire to learn all that was happening with my Facebook friends. Instead, I kept up with close friends and family members by using email or Messenger. I continued to have discussions and to share things with a very small circle of people who mean the most to me. And that connection kept me satisfied—for a time.

At the beginning of January, after a nearly six-month hiatus, I decided to rejoin Facebook. I felt that if I took certain precautions and stuck to certain principles when using Facebook, I could avoid being sucked back into the well of addictive behaviors and negative thinking that the platform may encourage.

Basically, my principles are:

1) Only use a laptop computer or iPad web browser to access Facebook; don’t use or install the Facebook apps.

2) Only connect to Facebook once per day, like I do when reading the NYT, usually in the morning while eating breakfast.

3) Limit myself to scrolling my Facebook feed for fifteen minutes at most.

4) Read and respond to personal messages, and “like” posts about personal matters such as family, friends, birthdays, anniversaries, fun activities, achievements (publishing a new book or article, etc.), or beautiful photos that a person took of nature, scenery, art etc.

5) Limit myself to one or two posts per day at the most.

6) Divert much of my writing energy to my blog posting, then use Facebook to share my blogs.

I’m sure that some people would vehemently disagree with me about some of these things. I don’t begrudge anybody’s use of Facebook—it’s a democratic space even if it’s a messy one (and democracy is messy). On the other hand, if anybody else out there feels the way I do about the addictive, negative, and repetitive nature of Facebook posting, you might want to consider unplugging for a while and then rejoining and adopting some of these principles.

Finally, I have to say that despite its many pitfalls, Facebook has provided me with many great pleasures over the two decades I’ve been using it. While I’m not happy about the advertising that invades my feed, I do appreciate the ability to connect and share things with so many friends, colleagues, relations etc. whom I don’t get to see these days, especially with the travel restrictions in our pandemic age. Like so many other technologies out there, there are benefits and hazards associated with Facebook and other social media platforms. Yet when used wisely, the benefits outweigh the hazards.