I haven’t used Facebook the way it’s designed to be used in years.
Not in a “high and mighty” tone, I just realised when I owned the gym that it became too much to keep track of, and generally made me feel worse.
So, one day I heard about a plugin called “newsfeed eradicator” on there, which blanks out the newsfeed and replaces it with an empty page.
This little addition allows me to see updates if need be (which is less than we think), and eliminate the entire option of seeing that deep, dark rabbit hole open up.
Anyway, it seems like Facebook is rolling out some kind of update, which has hit me already.
You guessed it, the newsfeed eradicator doesn’t work anymore.*
I opened the site up on my desktop, and was plunged into a newsfeed that I haven’t seen in many months.
Wow. I came up for air a few minutes later, and instantly it got me thinking about “scroll behaviour.”
Recently, Austin Kleon wrote a great post on doom scrolling, which is the tendency to search out and scroll through newsfeeds, looking for negative news, even though it makes us feel bad.
In short, I agree – I don’t think this doom scrolling stuff is a good idea at all.
But what if we go further?
When you think of scrolling, and when you think of your “feed” in general, how is it serving you?
Even when you find things that make you feel good, how good is that really?
What’s the true nature of that “hit?”
How does that play out over the months and years?
By saying yes to the scroll, even when it feels “right,” what are you saying no to?
Meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg has written that relationships are the ultimate training grounds for awareness. He suggests the speed of communication is so fast, that we can make relationship the perfect practice for mindfulness.
Has the newsfeed now caught up with this?
