Ugh! I spend a lot of time on social media due to work, writing, and the nature of the projects I’m involved in. Everyone has differing reasons for using it, but here are my new manifestos for using Facebook:
1.) Stop over-analyzing your friends’ posts. Maybe it IS just an inspirational quote and you DON’T know exactly what they are going through. Maybe what they are writing has nothing to do with wanting you to identify with them in some way and they just thought others would appreciate it as much as they did.
2.) For you cryptic posters: Stop This. Might I suggest a support group of some kind or growing up? This negative attention getting is not healthy in either scenario.
3.) Google, many other search engines, many websites, email and phones are still active. If you’ve exhausted your search, asking a question on Facebook could be an option. Not looking it up yourself and waiting for others to answer doesn’t really save time or guarantee accurate answers.
4.) Unfriend anyone who isn’t being a real friend to you in real life. Reading snippets about one’s life, then coming to a harsh conclusion about them without all of the facts, is not a friendship in any world. This is not a situation where hurting their feelings in real life should be an issue. So, feel free to protect yourself from the dramatics.
5.) Facebook has many privacy settings! For example, your pictures can be set to only be viewed by your friends and not friends of friends. Your posts can also be set up this way, even better, you can also update your status and posts in a custom setting where you can exclude certain people (like your boss or your mother-in-law)from viewing your photos.
6.) Don’t assume everyone has read (or chosen to read) what you have read on Facebook. Facebook is not meant as an exclusive means to communicate something, but it is a nice supplement.
7.) In-real-life relationships cannot be solely maintained by using Facebook. You still have to do that part on your own, in, um, real life. Granted, it’s an easy way to make announcements, share photos, get in touch and reconnect, but don’t rely on it because everyone’s newsfeed is different, set differently or people may not simply see it because they were busy.
8.) If you catch yourself stalking someone, stop. Then realize how some people may not possess that inner barometer to be mortified. I’m talking about the Facebook stalking everyone jokes about: How all of a sudden based on one picture posted, you’ve looked through every album of someone’s. Eww. Don’t rationalize that.
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