I miss emails from my friends. When I opened my inbox in the mornings I used to enjoy catching the odd “Hi how are you?” or “I have to tell you about the funny thing that just happened to me!” message muddled in with my newsletters, enquiries and client correspondence. Nowadays, they are rarely there. That’s not to say that I have no friends or committed some social faux pax that made me a pariah, it is just a symptom of how Facebook has changed the method of social communication online.
Now, when my friends have something to share, they post it as an update. When they want to get in touch, they leave a note on my wall. For longer messages, or private conversations I need to check my Facebook inbox.
I doubt I am alone in this experience, and yet recent studies have shown that frequent Facebook users actually spend more time using email. Why? Well, while I would love to preach that this is due to increased networking from Facebook, I suspect that it is due to people complusively checking their emails for notifications of something happening in their virtual social sphere on the site.
Even worse (from a productivity point of view) there is nothing more tempting when you get that “So and so just commented on your status” message than to click straight over to your FB account to check it out. And while there, I’m willing to bet that you spend more than just a few seconds reading your wall; the voyeur in you will take over and before you know it you have read what everyone has had for lunch, what they did last night, and giggled over the silly photo posted by that freind in that compromising situation.
We can’t really be blamed for this. Getting involved in a conversation is a natural, knee-jerk reaction. It is part of why Facebook is so successful, and they spend a significant amount of time making the site tantalizingly easy to wander around… it is fast becoming the rabbit hole of our generation. But beware of falling into this time-sink trap.
If most of your Facebook interaction is social, make sure you update your settings to NOT receive email updates like these.
You won’t miss anything, I promise! And I will also promise you that by being more disciplined with your Facebook visits that you will get more work done.
