Not quite 'poof'....

I've been wanting to complete this post for over a month and I've just been pulled in so many different directions. Now I find myself with a spare few minutes and so here we go.

A month or so ago I read this post on a blog that I follow:

http://www.nfallondesignstudio.com/2012/09/and-poof-they-are-gone.html

This is the comment I left:

"Oh my gosh!! good for you!!! I think in some ways social media has replaced authentic relationships.

While I have a twitter acct and facebook and pinterest - I do 'worry' about it all. I don't really post to all - my blog feeds into them automatically, so I blog and it shows up those places for anyone there who wants to read. So it's not a huge time suck for me - but I have noticed that when I do read or visit - the amount of information and the type of information generally is having a negative impact on me. It's too much and it's often the wrong kind.

I have begun pulling back and am waging this little internal war inside my head. I have begun unsubscribing to many facebook friends. So while they are still 'friended' their posts don't show up in my news feed.

I have also begun unsubscribing from many blogs in my reader (but not this one obviously!).

I don't know if I'm ready to 'die' off of social media.

Did you delete manually or did you use that automatic kill program?

Sorry to be so long winded, but this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately although I wasn't aware that it was a growing rumble on the internet."

I have also stopped accepting friends requests on FB from people I don't know. I'm trying to get my personal FB page to be, well, more personal. I may eventually unsubscribe to everyone who isn't an actual personal friend. New friends requests from people I don't know will politely be directed to my FB business page. I've pretty much stopped pinning, I don't tweet, I just deleted my Goodreads account. So slowly I'm 'cleaning house' a bit where social media is concerned.

Life is just too busy right now with my work schedule and two grands in the house now. And I really feel like I've become more and more disconnected from my local community and my local life and I'm very interested in reconnecting locally.

I won't be giving up my online friends, no worries about that, but how we connect will change a little. I will still be blogging and participating in the JAN forum and although I'm not deleting my FB account yet, twitter is set to die here in a moment.

What about you - what are your thoughts on social media? Are you still loving it all or are you feeling a bit overwhelmed?