Musing - Booking it out of Facebook

Brian and I had a discussion the other night regarding things that we might do to improve the atmosphere in our home and make our family ties stronger. Brian asked the question, "So what do we do?" Earlier in the week, we had also been discussing our Facebook accounts, and we had decided that we were going to merge our accounts since we were constantly looking at each other's anyway.

As I was sitting down with the computer one day to start the tedious process of creating our new Facebook page, I got the impression that maybe simply merging accounts would not be enough. Instead, I felt that we should just close our accounts because, at least for our family, Facebook had simply become a way to waste precious time and distract us from the more important things that we could be doing. THIS WAS NOT EASY. Everyday after I posted that we were closing the accounts down, I would get on my iGoogle homepage and see my Facebook there, just waiting for me to read every precious moment or agony in someone else's life. A large part of those lives, or "friends" if you will, were of people that I had not spoken to in over 15 years! It was so easy to justify leaving it open "just one more day." Amazing what a hold some things can take on our lives!!!!

Facebook certainly has it's place among the masses; it's just not for the Massey's right now. Truly, as I thought about actually closing down the account, "Gasp, should we go cold turkey all at once!" or should we just merge the two, a scripture from the Book of Mormon came to my mind:

2 Nephi 28:21 - And others he will pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well - and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

It describes exactly how I felt everytime I logged into my computer. Regardless of my original intent, I always seemed to find myself on Facebook, and usually, I would look up and realize that I had been there 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there....reading about lives of people I hadn't seen and looking at pictures of people I didn't even know! I was definitely being "lulled" into spending my day idly, all is well.....the laundry can wait, we'll eat out for dinner, all little things that add up to big things for us!

Anyway, I don't know that we won't come back to Facebook at some point in the future, I just know that for now, it is the right thing for our family to do. I hope that we will see the blessings that will come from trying to prioritize our time, and I do hope that my true "friends," those who know me and really love me and really care about my daily updates, will definitely keep in touch!!!!