Life is great without Facebook. I have a personal experience regarding that. I decided to quit Facebook after I realised that it was Facebook who was using me rather than the other way round. It’s been over six months since I deactivated my Facebook account. Initially I was a bit sceptical about taking that step as I found it difficult, scratching my brains to figure out how life would be without Facebook. Three years ago, I came up with the same decision but I could not stick to it. (I had to re-activate my account within two weeks of deactivating it then.)

Coming back to the point, now that I have deactivated my account, I feel that life is a lot better without Facebook. There are many things that you miss out with Facebook at your fingertips. Doesn’t it annoy you when you see two guys meeting over a cup of coffee, but both are actually busy with their phones? Yeah, I have seen a lot of guys like this. Sometimes, the only time they talk is when they’re discussing “What to order”. How can one be so enslaved by tech?

When you are out of Facebook, you get to realize and experience a lot of things, like:

1. You get a lot of time to invest on yourself. The amount of time you were busy browsing your news feed can be easily spent on learning something new which can be helpful for you in your real life.
2. You get time to sit back in your armchair, close your eyes and listen to a melodious masterpiece or your favourite song without any disturbance.
3. You get time to think. You get time to think about your life, your day, your goals and future plans and make changes accordingly to live a better life. You h=get time to plan your actions without that “social influence”.
4. You get to talk to the next person standing behind you in a queue. He may tell you something which can be really beneficial for you.
5. You get to strike a conversation with your friend when you both meet over a cup of coffee somewhere. And you really get to express yourself with your words and actions rather than some stupid emoticons or exclamations.
6. You do not have the risk of tripping over after stepping on a stone while walking because you were busy commenting on someone’s post or checking some notifications.
7. You have no notifications to drift you away from your primary objective every time you look into your smartphone.
8. You get time to talk to real people around you, put your feet in their shoes and get a feel of life. You get to stay away from some fake people who may just support some unproductive cause, just with the click of a “like” button.
9. You can stay away from things that don’t concern you. I don’t know what made Facebook change their privacy settings to such a way that a user gets to see activities of another user, who may not be in his “friend list” but is a mutual friend of one of his friends. Sometimes some really irrelevant posts pop up and you have the least idea what to do with them.
10. You get to save a lot of money. The advertisements that you see are designed in a way to distract you and lure you into buying something which you don’t need at all. And generally, after buying that item, you realise that you were better off without it.

These are just some of the things you feel after deactivating your Facebook account. There are a lot more things to experience in the real world. Facebook is actually an artificial world of meaningless likes, not-from-the-heart comments, stupid-fake-confusing emoticons. It is a dungeon without an exit door if you fail to realise where it is taking you. For students, it is a great retarding agent (personal experience). So, get out of that virtual world and start living your life before you get too hooked to the virtual world and reach a point of no return…

© Barnadhya Rwitam Sharma