Im confused as to what the jealousy or fear of being replaced has to do with. In your children’ life or perhaps your marriage? Im not sure why you would consider that a reason to keep facebook, from what you have provided.

I came to this realization some time ago, that basically I was spending too much time watching others lives go by and posting mine on the internet. It really served no purpose. Facebook is pretty much just for validation. Peoples thoughts, beliefs, activities are broadcasted and then affirmed by ‘friends.’ If people really care what I am up to the important ones have my phone # and can call me. Isnt that the way it used to be?

I deleted my facebook months ago, went back for a week, and then deleted it again. I dont really miss it, so what was it really adding to my life?

I understand being a parent you need to keep tabs on your children. My suggestion to this would be, a rule, if they want to have these types of social media, mom and dad get the passwords. You may be worried about appearing overbearing or invade their sense of privacy. I suppose I have old school attitude toward parenting. Facebook, twitter, iphones, computers arent rights they are privelages, especially if you are footing the bill for them. If your kids want to choose to continue using them, they then submit to the mom and dad terms and conditions. Just as we agreed to when joining this site. It was our choice to join, and commit to the rules. If we dont follow them, we dont get to use the site anymore. Give your children the same choice. This might serve to eliminate the need for a FB of your own. In addition to help you keep better tabs on what they are doing as there are ways on there to hide their activity from you anyhow.

At the least, delete it off your phone, and check it only from a computer. Not having it so readily available might help.

Hi Paula,

I’m not sure if you’ve read it yet, but there’s an article here on Tiny Buddha about Social Media. It, and the comments may be helpful to you.

For myself, I find Facebook to be addicting. I like what it was intended for – to connect to people from the past, but I feel so disconnected with some of them even though their posts are often very personal. I’ve been on and off it for about a year and a half. I find myself hoping that if I keep the lines of communication open, some of them might want to meet off of it for quality friendship time.

Currently, I’m taking a break from there. Because I can be addicted, too, I change my password to something I need to look up and destroy it until I’m ready to go back on. It’s easier than being questioned about deactivating by the few people who notice.

🙂 Peace

Hi Jen

Thanks for your post. I had shared the post (below) on social media few days ago with another TB member. Hope it can provide some inspiration your mind seeks to be able to move from a state of addiction to a mental state of controlled usage. Social media has the great potential to help us grow emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually so it is not all bad 🙂

Social media (plus any media for this matter) has the capacity to generate negativity in our lives. Mental peace and positivity comes down to the quality of people’s daily or recurrent thoughts. I will try to explain this by using a builder and his raw materials as an example. A builder can build a beautiful structure with raw materials, which everyone admires or gets great pleasure from or he can build an ugly structure, which creates an eye sore for most. Our mind is like the builder and our thoughts are like the raw materials.

Social media can load us with multitude of poor quality thoughts, which our mind uses EFFEcTiVELy to create anxiety, unhappiness, lack of contentment, comparisons, mental chatter etc. This is the reason behind a famous quote: we become what we think about the most. Everything around us has an impact on our quality of thoughts from the food we eat to the air we breathe.

You will find that abstaining from negative news, dramas of other people or social media will aid in leading a more positive life. Feeding our mind with positive thoughts help us to become more content, happy, less anxious and more productive beings. I have tried this over the last few years and it has been amazing. There is no one more special than “Me” or “You” so we need to look after the quality of our thoughts each second. Once our thoughts are predominantly positive, our emotions, feelings and actions start to align and we move away from being a slave to our mind to being the master of our mind and our destinies.

Cheers,

J