Dino’s Journal 📖

It made me a judgemental jerk. Why? I don't know. Maybe I didn't agree with their post? Maybe I felt belittled by their post? Maybe I felt jealous because of their post? There could be a bunch of different reasons why, but either way I think it goes back to the content I saw on my news feed. In my previous post I talked about how I was trying to rein in the content that showed up on my news feed. Well another reason for wanting to do that, was because the content that was shared on my news feed unconsciously made me judge the people that shared them. And I didn't want to be like that.

Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why.

My wife said the problem with me is that I read through every post that is shared on my news feed. Yes, I do. Isn't that the point of the news feed? To see what people are sharing? My wife has this ability, where she can just scroll through posts without really looking at them, or more importantly, without being affected by them. I don't have that ability. I stop to look at every post that is shared. And so if the post evokes some kind of negative emotion in me, I sometimes, unfortunately start getting judgemental. And I really, really don't want to be that kind of person. Who am I to judge really? I don't know what that person was going through when they shared that post; I shouldn't be judging.

So I started trying to be mindful of my thoughts. Whenever I see a post, I would try to remind myself not to judge. I can't really say that it worked all the time. Sometimes my brain was too tired from work that I didn't remember to be mindful anymore. I would then catch myself being judgemental and feel bad, feel embarrassed. Then I wonder, what am I even gaining from browsing through my news feed?

What's weird is how I don't get judgemental when interacting with people in the real world. Maybe it's the fact that I can talk to them, I can read their body language, I can listen to the intonation of their voice when they speak. I feel like you don't get judgemental when socializing with people in the real world, because you get some context with regards to what they are saying or doing at the moment.

Unfortunately you don't get that context online. I found that this problem for me only occurs on social media, like with Facebook. So as soon as I realized that the news feed was making me unconsciously judgemental, I cut it out. I quit. Deactivated my account and now I don't have this problem anymore.

#SocialMedia #QuittingSocialMedia #Facebook