I did this and discovered how habitually engrained I am to Facebook

This is not a post about deleting your FB from your phone. This is not a post about how much time we spend on FB, or how eerie it is to see an advert appearing on your feeds when you were just speaking or texting to your friends about something relating to it. For most of us, we already know that FB (or any other social media platforms of our choice) forms a substantial part of our daily lives.

Having said that, this discovery that I made originated from my intent to consciously make an effort to reduce my time on FB. I must admit that part of the reason of me going down this route is because I subscribe to the message propagated by the recent documentary “The Social Dilemma”.

I knew eliminating the usage of FB entirely is impossible. As humans, any effort to implement an immediate alteration to our habit is a shock to our neurological (and sometimes even physiological) system, resulting in futility. As such, deleting the app would not work. Imagine deleting it only to find yourself reinstalling it.

Therefore, in effort to reduce my FB usage, I decided to make it difficult for me access the app… by moving the app to the furthest back page of my phone. You see the location of the “Contacts” app on the first page of my phone? That is where FB app used to be located.

Thereafter, what I discovered about myself is quite shocking.

For absolutely no apparent reason or whatsoever, I find myself naturally accessing my contacts. After reading my messages on Whatsapp and exiting the app, my fingers will automatically hit contacts. After checking the weather, my finger will automatically hit contacts. After reading some info off the web, I will automatically hit contacts.

And the mother of all shockers…. for no apparent reason, I will unlock my phone and hit contacts.

I am hesitant to call this “muscle memory”, because I believe that term ought to be referred to something purposeful, such certain sports movement, or a well-trained musical instrument skill, definitely not on a FB seeking finger, especially when it is for no apparent reason.

In an effort to ascertain whether this is an isolated phenomenon, I decided to share this with a few of my friends. 3 of them experimented on this and found themselves hitting the app that they bestowed on the original FB location.

“I think I am going crazy”

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

These were some of their responses. Evidently, we are very much habitually engrained to our preferred social media.

If you are of the view that you will not be affected by this shocking discovery, you are probably experiencing what psychologist terms as “error in affective forecasting”; a form of bias perception of future events. Well, perhaps that is a topic for another day.

For now, the only way to find out whether you are different… is to try what I did.

Let me know the results if you do.

P/S: I did successfully reduced my time spent on FB. Hurrah!