![Me.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmTNDUhmwjNJu5ngTx4F6G2sjphuhDSvtn73CkTufs8eQa/Me.jpg)

Okay so it seems that I was not able to keep my promise of staying away from Facebook for a year, I know, what a poser. But, I don't want to punish myself. Let me be real here.

I just realized that I don't want to give myself such a hard time. Most of the people I know in real life and my few friends are there. And some of them actually  care. I think the reality is that the problem may not lie in social media itself, I think it is more of our susceptibility to validation and attention addiction.

We live in these Godless times and some of us are dying for a meaningful connection. And since we are not able to meet outside to have an actual human conversation and catch up with what's going on, social media has become the convenient tool. A technological solution. It should have been more helpful to our lives rather than destructive. But this is not the case.

To be fair, it is not all our fault of course. Not  just the fault of our own susceptibility to social media validation addiction. Toxicity and fake news are widespread on social media - but who created those? Humans of course. Nasty humans addicted to these crap. We just become the victims of falling into the foolishness of it all. Then things get worse.

I realized that okay, I post a nice picture on FB, people appreciate it and I like it. Then I post some thought or idea and as you know, these things don't get that much applause on traditional social media. This hurts me a bit. But then I realized that on a mainstream platform such as FB, we need to K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple, stupid. It may be too arrogant to say that most of our FB friends have short attention span and can be shallow. There's nothing much we can do to change them. I guess our problem is that we expect too much.

I think that we don't have to get all the satisfaction from one source. For example, we post our pictures on Facebook and Instagram to be appreciated and to remind some of our friends that we still exist. And maybe we can try to have a bit of self-control and stop craving for attention. I know it's hard, getting likes can be addicting. I know this myself as I check my notifications every now and then to the point of Iosing precious sleep. So now, I turn my phone off and put it very far away from my bed, I'd probably lock it somewhere if needed. I guess we just need to be self-aware, if we see that FB is already counter-productive, we stop. We lay low for a few days or only post during weekends when we don't work. I also unfollowed most people, toxic news, distressing videos, and other stuff. Though some things still make it to my feed - thanks to this cat meme algorithm. Unlike my other friends, I don't participate in trolling or keyboard warfare - I have better things to do jeez. Anyway, I think it's all up to us.

And as for deep stuff, meaningful content and other posts, we can get satisfaction from another source - alt social media or of course, here on HIVE. Here, I really appreciate that people can appreciate me with or without pictures. And that people actually read my thoughts and have something meaningful to say about what I write. This is the point of me having a blog. I am more than these insta-pics (thank you for super liking the photo above tho).

I think it's just like having a romantic relationship with someone, we expect too much or put all the burden in one person. We expect this person to give us everything. I guess we need to have our own lives to live, hobbies, friends to talk to, etc. Or get our other needs from other sources (take note I am not talking about cheating) so as not to be perpetually disappointed.

So yeah, my point is, my love and hate relationship with Facebook and other traditional social media will probably go on. And I will keep on posting about it. But it's all up to me to be aware when my time on these platforms are already harmful to my mental well-being or causing me great anxiety. This is why there's such a thing as "digital detox" or "Facebook break" or something.  I need to know when to stop. If I crave for a spark of intelligence, there are other places to go to. The good thing of it all is that there's always a way better platform to fall back into when everything else in my social media life fails. Hive is like a home.