Results From Blocking The Newsfeed

About a month ago, I posted about how to block the Facebook newsfeed. As a result of doing so I noticed some changes in my life - some obvious, and some not so obvious.

Productivity

The single biggest change, which many will anticipate, is that I got a lot more done. Even though I spent a fair bit of time staring at the blank newsfeed waiting for a notification update, I still spent less overall time on Facebook. It also had the unintended effect of causing me to realize how little interest I actually had in such things, as well as in things such a Reddit which led to an overall reduction in mindless internet distractions. My personal interpretation of still wanting to stare at the blank newsfeed is to reduce it to something like an email. Email is like a game where the brain rewards us with dopamine for viewing a new email/notification. I am not a cognitive scientist by any means but here is an interesting study.

Interpersonal

I also felt more disconnected with friends lives, so instead of just browsing through the feed, I messaged more of them which meant I had fewer interactions overall, but many more high quality interactions. However, this meant I also probably annoyed quite a few friends by sharing one too many trivial life occurences and facepalm-worthy joke. It did present an interesting opportunity to pose the same story to multiple people and see how they reacted to it.

In addition, I also experienced less of what I would like to call ‘Friday Night Jealousy’. This jealously feeling that whatever activity you are pursuing on your Friday Night, regardless of how social or exciting it is, is nowhere as great as what the people on your Facebook feed appear to me doing right now. Ironically, since I had so much more free time, instead of normally just looking at what others are doing and feeling a sense of melanchoy, I ended up so bored that I actively tried to find things to do which resulted in getting some great new stories such as a crackhead trying to get into our house during a party. Stories which I could then pose to multiple people as mentioned above.

Miscellaneous

It also seems that some of these behaviours have continued despite my recent reactivation of Facebook such as reduced Facebook usage overall, and a preference for messaging over more public interactions. Some behaviours have returned to their old ways though such as occasional, but not as frequent pointless scrolls through the newfeed.

Aside from these behaviours, I also noticed that this negatively affected my Klout score. It decreased from around 61 to around 56, and is now at 52.