Facebook has become a serious addiction for many people. If you find you are spending way too much time on Facebook, sacrificing other, more important things and almost never leaving your computer, you may be hooked too. Fight back before it’s too late.
Set a limit on Facebook time. Don’t kid yourself. You spend far too much time reading your news feed, posting funny statuses and playing with emoticons on Facebook. Use your watch or a timer to keep track of the hours. Set a realistic goal that limits the time you devote to your social networking each day. If you cannot stick to it, that’s still a good thing. It shows how little you are in control and should motivate you to try harder.
Use Facebook groups or privacy settings to limit who you interact with. Groups let a select number of Facebook friends chat among themselves, excluding all others. It’s great if you and say, your family want to use Facebook only for one another. Privacy controls reduce the exposure of your activities. As a result you get less interactions from others, and the less you have to respond to.
Turn off notifications. Email and text notifications will only suck you in to Facebook. Turn them off. Tell people to call you if it’s an emergency. To do this, go to the Facebook log in page, sign in and go to the account settings on the Account menu.
Start a new hobby or activity. It’s hard to tear yourself away from Facebook games and whatnot when you have nothing else to do, really. Take up a new hobby. Have you always wanted to draw? What about training your new puppy some tricks? Or taking the kids out to the park? Find something you and your family would just love doing. It sure would lessen the allure of the Internet, at least for a while.
Don’t let Facebook ruin your life. You’re not just a number in the social graph. You have a life outside of the ‘book. Get it back.