Confessions of a Facebook Addict (Parenting in the Social Media Era)

I call it “Facebook Thumb,” and it was self-diagnosed when I began to notice a constant throbbing in the palm of my hand. I knew the answer to healing Facebook Thumb was simple. Just stop using my palm-held device so frequently. But if you are a Facebook Addict like myself, you know that it’s not that simple.

I wake up to my iPhone alarm, swipe left, and my day begins.

Confession #1 is that before my brain is even fully awake, my finger just seems to keep on swiping. I can't seem to help it!

Before I know it, I've opened up my emails, read the headlines in my News App, and gone down the never ending rabbit hole of the internet abyss.

With four children living in my home, the odds are rarely in my favor when it comes to getting a good night of sleep. I am also a self-diagnosed Mombie (the mother version of a zombie), and mornings are particularly Mombie-like for me.

Yes, I confess that I sometimes dream of becoming a real zombie, because zombies don’t even care about sleeping. I do.

Going into motherhood, I envisioned maybe three or four months of sleepless nights, and then the kid would surely be sleeping through the night and I could go back to my eight glorious hours in bed.

Well, I haven’t slept well in almost twelve freaking years now, and that makes me feel as crazy as it sounds.

Reflecting back on how my Facebook Addiction began, I think it goes back to my lack of sleep. You see, I needed a crutch to lean on. A way of turning off and tuning out when my body and mind needed a break from real life.

Facebook was just the reality shit-show I was looking for, and I was instantly hooked.

It started innocently enough, with me feeling connected during a disconnected time of my life.

After living my entire life in California, I was abruptly uprooted to New Haven, Connecticut, where I happily supported my new husband as he dedicated himself to his postdoctoral studies. Though I am an adventurous spirit with a willing heart, I found myself surrounded by unfamiliar and often unfriendly territory, and I felt alone and bored.

Enter, Facebook. An online “community” in which I felt as though others really gave a shit about the daily happenings and shananagans of my life, and I got to have little glimpses into their worlds as well.

When I learned I was pregnant with my first little bundle of joy, I lived roughly 3,000 miles away from family and close friends. Facebook kept me sane, and made the vast distance between me and my loved ones seem less.

I wanted to share this special experience with them, and Facebook allowed me to do so. I don’t know how many times I’ve muttered to a friend, “Thank God for Facebook, or I’d never “see” you!”

So I am not here to put down Facebook, or to make anyone feel guilty about being a Facebook user. The online social forum that Facebook and other social media platforms have provided has been a life changer and a life saver for many of us. Myself included.

I should also note that I have zero intention of deleting my own Facebook account. I am simply taking the time to write and confess about what it was like to be a Facebook addict, and what ended up happening when I went through a little Facebook detox.

I found myself clicking on that little F Icon so many times per day, that I’m embarrassed to admit just how often it happened. It became like a twitch, where I didn’t even realize I was doing it anymore.

On many occasions, I would find myself staring blankly at my phone, wondering how I got there and why I was holding it in the first place.

The baby cried in the background, the toddler pulling hard at my pant leg, and there I stood stupidly, staring at another picture of a funny dog or a cute kid. But my own cute kids were right in front of me, in real time, and they needed me.

What the hell was I thinking?

“Put the phone down! Press the round button and let. go. of. the. phone. Let it go! Why are you doing this!?”

This became a nagging voice I heard on a daily basis. I would argue back with my conscience, trying to convince it that I NEEDED my phone. I NEEDED Facebook.

“You don’t understand.” I’d say back to myself. “I just need a moment to breathe. To forget for a moment about the crying kids, endless housework, and unanswered work emails. It makes me a better mom and a more efficient worker to have a moment to myself like this.”

This worked for a while, and I was able to convince myself that I deserved my Facebook breaks throughout the day. And in a way, I did deserve a little break each day. We all do.

But just like any addict, I started to abuse the time I spent on my Iphone, and other aspects of my life started to suffer for it. What started as an innocent break from the overwhelming challenges of motherhood, became an all consuming virtual world that began to consume my real world.

Thoughts of which picture I would post, and obsessing over taking a dozen pictures of every single moment of my day began to taint the actual experiencing of those moments.

I was letting my mind wander and wonder about what was happening in Facebook Land rather than living in the actual moment.

Being a few years into Facebook Land, we all know too well the feeling of jealousy, joy, envy, guilt, annoyance, or happiness that our “friends” posts can evoke. But that has rarely stopped us from using, or pressing that “Like” button, or even taking the moment to compose an actual comment!

It seemed that the more I became a User, the more I had to Use. Addiction.

I’d check my page, pop something in the microwave, then push the refresh button on my phone in hopes that someone out there posted something new in the past 30 seconds.

Thirty seconds. Really? Really.

I recall a particularly low moment of addiction, when my kids had finally gone to bed for the night. I was feening for some screen time, and turned on my computer. Being that I am a child of the 21st century who is blessed to only deal with First World problems, waiting the one minute for my computer to turn on was just too long, so I sat and waited with my Iphone Facebook App instead. Instant Gratification.

One minute. That used to be my tolerance limit for how long I could go without wanting some sort of stimulation.

It’s no secret that our society has become over stimulated, and my naturally busy mind just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to put a stop to this mindless stimuli, and I slowly began to recognize this. It began to feel uncomfortable to just sit in stillness, alone with my own thoughts.

I used to love daydreaming. On rare occasions, I would share these dreamy thoughts with my close friends, and they used to lovingly refer to these as “Erin’s Epiphanies.”

What I had thought was a good use of Me Time, had actually begun to interrupt my natural ability and desire to ponder the world around me.

Once smart phones found their way into nearly every hand in America, time alone with our own thoughts became a thing of the past

Since I have always had little tolerance for waiting, I was thrilled that I could instantly pass the wait-time with one of the many engaging Apps on my phone. But I began to miss my daydream time, and very quickly forgot what my mind was like before the iPhone entered my life.

Then Facebook made it even more addicting by making it easy to share online articles with the click of a button. And suddenly, my page became inundated with article after article of all the ways I was failing, or not failing in life.

Here is an example of what I’m talking about….

I scroll down to a post, and the person who posts it states that it’s a “Must Read” article. I click it open.

It’s titled something like, “The Top 10 Things You Should NEVER Say To Anyone.”

Of course I’ve said at least half of them. Internal anxiety begins to bubble inside me. Even though I know I should stop reading it, I quickly get my kids engaged in a toy or an activity so that I can finish the article about what I should stop doing immediately if I want to live a better life.

Meanwhile, my adorable babies are learning, and doing, and laughing. Without me. As I stare lovingly at my phone.

Then, I might click on an article that reads something like this:

“Studies Show That Successful Mothers Do These Five Routines With Their Children.”

My internal conversation while reading the article looks something like this:

“Routines? What are those? I’ve always been more of a spontaneous gal myself. Shoot. I’ve totally ruined my kids. What’s wrong with me? What kind of mother doesn’t have more routines for her kids??”

And then, of course, there seems to be an endless amount of articles that proclaim we are eating and drinking poison unless we X, Y, or Z.

“35 Toxic Foods You Probably Eat Daily.”

Well, drats again. I’ve just given my kids cancer, and probably ruined their chances of ever going to college, too. And that’s just one day of articles read. After a week of reading articles such as these, it’s no wonder we live in a fear-based society that thrives on comparing and judging others!

Ok. So. What now? What do I do now that I finally recognize that I need to fight this so-called addiction? Well, for starters, I erase my Facebook App on my phone, making it one step harder for me to mindlessly check in on Facebook Land.

It was…..interesting at first. Not so much hard. But I had to be very intentional about not going on my iPhone, and instead, choose to spend my wait-time and my down-time in a different way. I bought a book. An actual real life book, with paper pages and a well developed story structure. By day five of my detox, I was well into the plot, and couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next.

I became so used to reading short articles and stories online, that I had forgotten the beautiful way a long book opens up different parts of my mind. And you know what? I felt more peaceful.

The constant buzz that became a norm in my life began to quiet, and I could see the fog begin lifting and revealing my True Self again. At first, I had to force myself to simply sit with my thoughts or interact with the people around me when I was waiting somewhere or craving some down time.

Changes happened quickly. After only a few days without using my phone as a crutch, my mind felt sharper, clearer, refreshed. My time became more valuable to me, and I began to realize what a rare gift it is to have time alone with my own thoughts, and time to just stare at my kids as they played, or slept, or whined, or laughed. When I was a Facebook Addict, I tried to fill that rare gift of time with my Iphone, thinking that I was using my time wisely by doing so.

Without the wonder or desire to see what’s on Facebook, or experiencing a moment without thinking about how I might wittily post it on my Facebook page, I became more mindful.

Mindfulness, as it’s explained in the dictionary, is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

Now, I’m not going to lie and say that I am Facebook Free these days. I confess I still am on it pretty much daily, and I honest to goodness love seeing photos of my friends. I appreciate social media for what it is but I also try to understand it for what it's no. It is not a replacement for any aspect of my life, but it sure is a welcome distraction sometimes from the crazy overwhelm that is my own life right now!