What I learned from my week without Facebook

 

 

I have been leading a bible study on the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan for the girls in Hubby's youth group this summer. Each week I challenge them with an activity or something to help them get closer to God. One of our challenges was to give up something that distracts you from God and when you are faced with the temptation to instead reach out to God. It is sort of like the idea of lent except we only did it for a week. I chose to give up Facebook. I have the app on my phone and therefore check it multiple times a day.
During this week of fasting from Facebook, I learned a few things and I thought I would share:

1.  Facebook is a time sucker. When I added up all of the time I spent during the day swiping through my app it astonished me. Instead I channeled all of that energy into my bible app. I was able to read a few chapters at a time, and complete a bible study.
2. Facebook can be dirty. My week away I realized that I didn't miss the thousands of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post articles. Or the scandalous selfies taken by 14 year olds. Or the language. Or the hatred. Instead of surrounding myself in all of that, I surrounded myself in the love of Jesus.
3. Life goes on. As much as we sometimes feel like life revolves around us, when you take a brake from seeing your world on a web page, you realize that not only does that not define you, but everyone else moves on with their own life.

4. There is good in Facebook. I learned that there are actually some good qualities about Facebook, you can keep in touch with long lost friends, spread the word about events, good news and such, and keep all of your favorite memories in one place.

While I'm being honest here I have not deleted my Facebook page. In fact you can still follow me on it here. But I have cut down on the amount of time I spend on there. I have deleted friends who I feel are only about spewing things I don't want to read about (those who contribute to #2), and I have put down my phone and refocused on my job as a Mom.
I hope that you  take what I have said into consideration and I challenge you to take a break from Facebook too.

**Note. All opinions are my own, and the name Facebook is copyrighted.