How getting back onto Facebook reminded me why I've left.

Not having a Facebook account is sometimes inconvenient to say the least.

You know, you miss all the fancy events and all the funny videos people post and re-post on their walls, so that you turn out to be even more socially awkward when everyone talks about something like this and you simply have no idea what they talk about.

I can't quite remember when was the first time I've deactivated by account, I think it was half-way through my first year at uni and it was Lent or something of the sort, so I just disappeared from the thing. And I enjoyed it. So after some time I've just deleted the account completely.

Nothing major happened, though I had to train people to send me emails, because no, I don't get Facebook notification for lawyerly dinner you organised for next Friday, extra lectures and all other stuff.

Coming to Leiden , however, I've decided to have a bit of a comeback, because no-one sends emails here! This is terrible, at Oxford all of the societies will send you weekly emails with events etc, but here nothing like this exists, so convenience won over my deep conviction that Facebook is not great.

But after just over a month, I know why I left.

I found people are terribly insufficient when you try to sort out something via Facebook. It just takes absolutely ages to arrange meetings, divide the workload or generally do anything. Emails are so much faster, probably because they appear much more formal and people actually think before sending anything off. And this is absolutely fantastic.

And people just spend hours refreshing the home page, as if something fantastic was bound to happen. And it isn't, I promise. The saddest thing that I've seen was when I was in a restaurant and the couple sitting at the table next to ours spend the entire time we've been there with eyes glued to their phones. I honestly don't know where this world is going.

I really like this video, because it sums up what Facebook is really like. It simply makes you live other people's lives. Honestly, I don't get why people keep posting pictures on Facebook for instance. Pictures of food, pictures from holidays, pictures from their weddings, picture from parties, funerals, funfairs, pictures of their babies, boyfriends, cats, mothers, pictures of their bedrooms, shoes and whatever else you can think of. Why? No one is interested! Except of people constantly scrolling down their home page, but even they are not genuinely interested, they just want to see stuff because they have not enough to do.

Just to put it straight, I'm not going to make some sort of a crusade against Facebook, the thing is on the way to a collapse anyway. Those who were to join already joined and more and more people leave. But for God's sake, get off your phone every now and then!

Found on Pinterest. So true.

Yes, so I left Facebook to have more freedom and be more attentive to life. And I am as a result, because if you tell me something and I don't listen, I can't look it up among your Facebook posts. And I consider this a blessing.