In my last post I started to document my experiences with trying to make Facebook a better experience. Today we’re going to talk about the most controversial of all my changes – unfriending.

When I dramatically limited my time on Facebook it became necessary to control the way Facebook presented information. Unfollowing is one control but it was an insufficient while at times necessary first step.

After watching Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things it struck me that just like keeping only the clothes I love, I needed to keep only the parts of Facebook I loved. And this meant the controversial action of unfriending.

Drastic measures

Everyone comes to the point of unfriending for different reasons but mine were in part a piece of integrity. Once I unfollowed someone I thought it was out of integrity to remain friends on Facebook. Unfollowing can be a temporary means to quiet things down but I realized that there were people I was not listening to yet I was expecting them to listen to me.

Regardless of your reasons, my purpose here is to support you in your decision to unfriend. So take a breath and read on.

What does it mean to be a friend

At the heart of my current thinking about this is that the term friends on Facebook has lost its meaning. It’s more like LinkedIn now where a friend is really a connection of some sort. I met you somewhere and instead of swapping email addresses we found eachother on Facebook and now we don’t talk but we occasionally like photos.

I read recently about a study on dating that said the common pattern is that people meet in person, friend on Facebook, look around a bit and like a few things, eventually start a chat, and then go “hang out”.

Networking, marketing, dating, bloviating, cat pictures. Occasionally someone shares that a family member is ill but you probably won’t see it because you have 800 friends clogging the newsfeed, crowding out this possibly important event.

In a technical sense, friend means a person who can see your non-public posts. Friends can be grouped so that you can further control the visibility of non-public posts. If you need to segregate audiences this is one way to do it that is not possible if you post publicly. So “friend” is really just an attribute connected to the privacy apparatus of Facebook.

So I just stopped thinking the word Friend in the context of Facebook means anything in the real world.

You don’t owe the world anything

Facebook is a tool for communication and entertainment. We use it for a variety of purposes but we should be using it because we find it brings value to our life. That said, there may be parts of it that don’t bring value. And as I learned in Minimalism, if it doesn’t bring value to your life it doesn’t need to be in your life.

So remember we are only talking about Facebook here. Real friends talk in real life directly. Remember, this is only about Facebook and deciding what parts of Facebook you want to keep. You need not even think about this as removing things if it makes it easier. Instead think of it as making room for what you want.

Overwhelmed

It is important to protect and control our energy. Facebook can not only suck up time and energy, it can also spread negative energy. Emotional contagion is a hot topic for me. Facebook has published research on their experiments with the effects of showing users negative or positive content. This is important for me because I feel like I have a high level of empathy. While I try to remain conscious of this effect I find that I am still susceptible.

Am I creating an echo chamber

We live in a world full of communication. We use our own filters and are responsible for our own biases. But on Facebook we are also exposed to the filters and biases of our friends. And some might say that this is a good thing, that we need to avoid creating an echo chamber. Some might say, “I need to be exposed to all these differing viewpoints.” But there are much better ways to broaden our intake. Content is everywhere. Find some good bloggers and reputable news sites and subscribe. And remember, removing a few Facebook friends isn’t going to make you ignorant.

First decide what you value

You probably arrived at this point without much thought. You responded to some friend requests and you made some friend requests. In some cases you had a reason but it may not be relevant now.

As with other things in life it is a good idea to take some sort of inventory of what you value. Instead of reacting you can be proactive by creating a list of the things you value in a Facebook friend. Remember this is not about real life friends. We’ll get to that later.

So write down some things you value and some things you despise in relation to your activity on Facebook. Here’s a sample of mine:

1. My friends are respectful with disagreement
2. My friends are optimistic or not overly pessimistic
   Is today always the end of the world?
3. My friends don’t continually repost breathless hyperbole
   Yes, I’m being snarky…it’s my right as I decide what I want out of Facebook
4. My friends appreciate my humor and/or I appreciate theirs
5. My friends provide a window into an interesting world that is not my own
6. I am interested in what my friends are doing

You might be thinking that it is too much to expect but once you have your list you will also weigh these categories and make judgements about how your Facebook friends fit these. It’s just a list of values right now so be true to yourself and write down how you really feel. Facebook for you could end up being a close knit group of supportive people. Or maybe it’s filled with comedians making jokes. Just remember anything is possible, you don’t need to adhere to some script no one even wrote for you.

Notice that I didn’t put anything about real life friends here. My real life friendship and my relationship with someone on Facebook need not be correlated. In fact the more I contact friends outside of Facebook the less I need them on Facebook. And conversely the less we are on Facebook the more we are contacting outside of it.

Another note: if you want people to be your audience then just unfollow them. But if you cannot find any other value for a person being your Facebook friend you might want to look into that. Sure, you might have that aunt that never posts anything but you know enjoys seeing what you are up to. So maybe your value for that is “I love for this person to be able to see me on Facebook” and find no reason to remove them.

Remember, this is not about removing people as much as it is about making room for what you want for your experience. And I would urge you to read up on other ways to take control. But this piece right here is about unfriending.

Now do something about it

With only 10 minutes a day on Facebook I decided to be pretty drastic. If it didn’t provide value to be friends on Facebook I unfriended them. This was the scary part.

But remember, the valuable stuff is getting crowded out by the not valuable stuff. If you find yourself spending more time on Facebook than you want, one reason might be that you are too connected. You cannot be expected to keep up with a network of hundreds of Friends, Fan Pages, Groups, Events, and Apps.

Imagine Facebook as bottles of ketchup, take all your hundreds of friends and likes and put each of them on a shelf in the grocery store. Now think about your favorite type. That’s what you really value, what you want if you can have anything. Now look for it on those shelves.  Take off the bottles you want and put them on a separate shelf.

It’s okay if you aren’t yet ready to take a baseball bat to the rest of the shelves. If you have a lot of time to kill then by all means take it all in, bottle after bottle. Read the label, turn it around, check the ingredients and the sugar content. But I only have 10 minutes.

But I can’t break the bottles

If you are really not ready then you can just unfollow them and come back later. This is still progress.

I did this and realized it wasn’t enough and it was a drag on my integrity not to unfriend certain people. I had my shelf of favorites but the other shelves were still there and they still found ways to distract from my 10 minute dream. Maybe it was a problem with impulse control but this is my Facebook experience and for me unfriending was an important part of it.

Let’s look more at some reasons you might be afraid.

But I’m compassionate

I have two things to say about this:

First, this is just Facebook. Second, these people will still exist exactly as they are after you hit that button.

We’ll deal with reactions in a minute but just remind yourself that this is only Facebook and taken realistically, unfriending someone on Facebook is nothing more than removing a connection between two records in a database. Your reason for removing them and their perception of this are not going to be correlated. And you do not have nor need to control that.

You owe them nothing in Facebook-land. In fact you owe Facebook nothing. It extracts more value from you than it provides. Otherwise it would not be a profitable company.

But I like them in real life

Well, this is even more reason to remove them on Facebook if you don’t value the experience of being connected to them there. You might love Sarah but if all she does on Facebook is post photos of her cat then maybe unfriending her will prompt you to spend more time in person or on the phone with her.

Or maybe they use Facebook primarily for business and you aren’t getting anything out of their advertisements. You don’t need to be friends with their persona to be friends with their person.

Maybe not being friends on Facebook will make more room for being friends in real life. Less Facebook and more face time is a goal of mine.

What if they get upset

Ok, here’s the meat of it all. No matter how much you buy into the logic presented here, you might still be worried about the fallout. As a people-pleaser this was a great way for me to push on my edges.

First, I will say that many of them will not even notice. They likely are just as overwhelmed as you and if they made it to the wrong end of the unfriend button there is a high likelihood you two didn’t interact much. Your first few passes at this are likely to be removing people you barely know. Just think about your posts and how many people comment. I suspect there are less than 30 people who even notice my posts despite the number of likes I might get when I change my profile photo.

This is just Facebook.

I know some people actually use apps to find out who unfriended them. As hard as it is I will contain my snark over this.

Some may argue that you should tell people first. I struggled with this and decided that telling them might communicate that it is somehow their fault or prompt them to get angry or negotiate. The important thing here is that this is YOUR choice for YOUR reasons. This is all about you deciding to take control of your Facebook experience.

Oh my god what have I done

You pressed the button, so what could happen? They could get upset and/or they could confront you.

If they get upset this is not your concern. Now that you have come this far, you see Facebook differently than they do. Bravo!

Just remember, you pushed a button that severed just one of many possible connections between you in a database. You might still connect in other ways, via mutual friends posts, groups, fan pages, and events.

I would argue that groups are a much better way to connect with some people

They will also be converted to followers (as of this writing) and will continue to see some of your public posts in their feed. They can go to your profile and see all your public posts. They can see your comments on public posts and posts of mutual friends.

So like I said, they aren’t going anywhere, in Facebook or in real life.

A funny thing happened on the way to our unfriending

A gift I was given in this whole process was someone unfriended me first. With my 10-minute limit I had to be pretty sure who I was unfriending each day and when I went to find someone on my list they weren’t there. What?!? They unfriended me! Why? What did I do? Oh god, do people think I’m an asshole or something?

But then I realized that they just did me a favor. I got to see what it feels like on the other side. But since I’m in this place with Facebook now I was upset and questioning for all of 5 minutes. Our real life relationship remains the same. I rarely see her despite living in a small town. I have lost nothing and I am confident that if I do see her there will be no awkwardness on my part. Because it’s just Facebook.

But what if they confront me

Congratulations! You’re communicating.

Here comes the edge pushingest part of all. You want to remain in integrity and you don’t want to make this about them. So what can you say? I like you but I hate you on facebook? Kidding…

• You are realigning your use of Facebook and that included removing friends from your feed and notifications
• This doesn’t mean you are not friends in real life, this is only about controlling your Facebook experience
• You hope that it spurs more direct contact like this instead of the false feeling of connection we get from seeing our posts on Facebook
• We still have connections on Facebook and unfriending does not “mean” anything

Or maybe you don’t like them in real life either. That’s not a Facebook issue but the advice remains similar. Stay in your integrity and make it about you and not them. They are just “occurring as” and it is your choice how and if you respond to that.

Soothe yourself

Regardless of how others handle this, your responsibility is to yourself. Again, this is only Facebook. If you take it as not personal that is what matters.

I forgot to mention that they might post about it on Facebook and you won’t be able to see it now. I’ve seen these posts a few times. They might freak out. They might think it was personal. They might tear you a new one to their friends. If all of this is happening without your knowledge then it doesn’t matter and it does you no good to imagine this being the case regardless.

Just soothe yourself. And then reward yourself. Pat yourself on the back for doing something you maybe thought was taboo. Have faith that in a short time you will see a benefit.

And if you made someone upset they may come around in time. You may have set an example they end up following some time later. That is my hope in sharing this. I have this weird need to tell people they should be deleting friends on Facebook so I can feel better about doing it myself. Solidarity ya know.

And if they don’t come around that is ok too. You are not a bad person for removing someone on Facebook. Get over yourself. They can get mad all they want but it likely won’t last. They’re overwhelmed on Facebook just like you were before you unfriended them.

Besides, friends can disagree. Friends can bump into one another and still get along. Friends don’t need to be “friends on Facebook”.

But I suspect very few that you unfriend will be a real friend. You might think they are at first but if you haven’t talked on the phone in the last year it won’t matter. And true friends are those people you can pick back up with after long absences. Missing them on Facebook could just hasten that phone call and that could be a good thing.

But what if I get it wrong

In the immortal words of Johnnie Rotten “I could be wrong, I could be right.”

So what if you get it wrong? None of this is permanent. It’s Facebook. It’s a website and a mobile app. Take a breath.

The poor unfriended can request to be friends again. And you can too. There are all sorts of snarky memes about this action but we all have the right to make up our mind in each moment. We are free to change our mind (and own up to that if necessary) any time we want. We are free to make mistakes and decide what was right is now wrong. I’d argue against judging your actions as right, wrong, or mistaken. It is just something you did based on what you wanted and valued at the time. And if people think you are some sort of jerk for that, then so be it.

As a people pleaser this is the hardest for me – to be seen as having some sort of intention that is anything other than saintly. But this is all just ego run amuck.

So forget about all of that and go enjoy your 10 minutes on Facebook. If it doesn’t bring you value then repeat this until it does.