Facebook. We all have it. We all check it multiple times a day. I am one of these people who checks Facebook undeniably every time I have Wi-Fi access.
Not bragging by any means, but I have over 1,000 Facebook friends that I have collected over the life of my Facebook profile, circa 2009.
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These “friends” (I use friends lightly as I haven’t talked to several for years) have accumulated through a variety of means: high school, college, work, travel, mission trips, etc.
Because of this large number of Facebook friends, there is a lot to look at on my news feed. And seeing all these items on my news feed comes with a price — lately, every time I have gone on Facebook and scrolled through my news feed, I have left my social media surfing feeling one of three things: sad, angry or jealous.
I’m sure plenty of other Facebook users have felt these same sentiments at some point of their time using Facebook, but I can’t help but feel things are getting worse. All I have sensed on Facebook for the past few months is negativity.
I know there are positive things on Facebook like such things as engagement announcements, wedding pictures, baby announcements, cute videos of a kitten and baby pictures, but being human, I have a tendency to focus only on the negative.
I am so tired of seeing people post about how rude someone treated them today at the supermarket or the news report about the most recent horrible thing that's happened in the world.
I’m not saying that world news isn't important, but I don’t need to read a headline about it every two scrolls on Facebook — it just puts me in a bad mood to see negative headlines on Facebook every other post.
But it’s not even things like Facebook rants and shared criminal and terrorist news reports; it’s things shared on Facebook that put other people’s opinions down. It seems like someone shares something about their political views or how they don’t like grilled cheese or something ridiculous like that, and another person feels the need to put that person down for their opinions.
And on that note, everyone has the right to share their opinions, but is it totally necessary to share ALL your opinions on Facebook — especially the negative ones?
Trust me, I do truly want to hear about your job promotion and your new baby, etc. — I really do, but is it possible that we keep it at that?
Is it possible that together, we can make this world a more positive place by starting with positivity on Facebook?
In my experience, social media has a powerful ability to change the opinions and ideas of people who interact with it. That being said, when positivity is shared on social media, positivity is therefore spread.
Trust me, I am no saint when it comes to avoiding sharing negative things on Facebook, but I am going to try to make what I share more positive.
I know there is no way that we can stop all the bad things from happening in the world, but maybe we can reconsider which of the bad things in the world, we are sharing on Facebook and every social media outlet for that matter.
We all hear what is going on in the world in the news, and we can find even more information about what’s going on by visiting news websites, but we don’t need to go on Facebook and read about the negativity in the world another 20 times over and over again.
To those who may say, “Well, you saying that we can’t share negative things on Facebook is going against freedom of speech,” I say go for it.
Share negative things if you would like, rant about your bad day or how the lady on the subway glared at you.
I’m simply asking for Facebook users to think twice about what they are posting on Facebook and decide if it is really worth making someone else’s day a little more negative to share the bad thing that happened to you or someone you know.
In the end, is it really going to make your bad day better to share it with the world? Probably not.
No one wants to go on Facebook day after day feeling their mood shifting towards negativity.
Again, do what you would like on Facebook, but I’m just saying maybe if we all think twice about spreading negativity on Facebook, maybe we could make the Facebook sphere a more positive place.
