My Social Networking Experiment: No Facebook For A Week

I’ve decided to do a little experiment.

I will not log into, or use Facebook for an entire week.

LOLWUT?!? Most of you might say. But first of all, I need to clarify a couple things.

First of all, this has absolutely nothing to do with Facebook’s controversial privacy policy, nor am I doing it because of Arizona’s SB1070 or BP’s Oil Spill or anything like that, nor am I doing it so Justin Bieber will go away or vuvuzelas will be banned from the World Cup, nor am I even doing it for religious observance reasons.

This is just an experiment.

See, I’m somewhat mildly addicted to Facebook – and I use those adjectives mainly because I still eschew those silly virtual farming or mafia games that all my other friends are addicted to (I never touch them in the first place). But I do find most of my day consumed by posting stuff or poking around my friends’ statuses, then posting hopelessly witty comments to them, awaiting friends’ hopelessly witty comments to my hopelessly witty comments, and me replying to my friends’ hopelessly witty comments to my hopelessly witty comments. Lather, rinse, repeat. Before I know it it’s already 4 a.m. (an exaggeration, somewhat…). But I know I should be focused on finishing certain projects (i.e. my long-awaited album) or using my time even more constructively.

So this is how it works:

• From Monday, June 28 to Monday, July 5, I will not be on Facebook.

• I will also not be using my cellphone’s Facebook application.

• As an extra security measure, I have turned off all my email notifications to avoid temptation.

• If anyone needs to contact me, they may email, text or call me (If you are already my Facebook friend, such info is already listed in my profile). You may also interact here through my blog.

• I will also be curbing my Twitter use, but seeing as there may be situations where I would need to use it, I would not be doing a total Twitter abstinence.

• Oh yeah, just so I won’t be cheating, no Friendster or MySpace either (not that I use those anymore to begin with).

• I will not be doing a total cut-off of the Internet. I will still use email, I will still blog. In fact, part of this is to discipline myself into channeling my expressions and creative energy into blogging and writing.

The whole point is to see how not using Facebook for a week will change my life (or not change my life). Will it be better off? Will it be worse off? Will it improve or impede my social interactions with people?  Will I be able to meet and maintain relationships with people? Will I be more social in real life? Will I be cut off from social opportunities in real life? Does social networking make for more superficial interpersonal interaction between people? Or does it really bring humanity closer?

The answers to the above remain to be seen. You can find out right here in this blog! I’ll be updating daily to gauge such things. Will I miss out on some things? I probably will. But that’s the price I have to pay for doing such an experiment.

So, see ya! Or maybe I won’t see ya…?