Social media, including Facebook, have become ubiquitous and can add positively to your personal and professional experiences.  Managing the time you spend with social media and managing the value it adds to your life is complicated.  Left unmanaged, social media becomes a manipulative and distracting time waster.

There are ways to better manage social media

so it doesn’t manage you.  

Today we’re focusing on Facebook and an approach to decluttering your news feed so that when you do spend time on Facebook, you’re more likely to see posts about things that matter to you, from the people who matter most to you.

The Facebook newsfeed is the constantly updating, extraordinarily addicting feature that showcases posts from your friends, your friends’ friends, sponsored ads, online games, etc.  A cluttered newsfeed results in more time spent looking for what’s important to you and more distraction as you return obsessively to see what’s new.

Decluttering your news feed is an important step toward better managing your time and attention while using Facebook.

To begin with think about your recent experiences with Facebook and the posts that have been most valuable or useful to you.  Were they important personal announcements: engagements, births or deaths? Were they timely news or local event announcements?  Was it something that made you laugh (because we all need a good laugh!)?  Think about what you like seeing and who provides you that content.

Now that you have clarity on how Facebook adds value to you, get started decluttering your newsfeed so that this content stands out.

Manage your “Friends”  

Facebook made decluttering difficult by labeling other users in our networks as “Friends”.  Socially and culturally we put a lot of meaning behind the word friend.  This makes the work of decluttering Facebook friends awkward often because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.  Consider looking at the process of unfriending, unsubscribing or making a Friend an Acquaintance in a different way.  Readily using these features in Facebook (unfriending, unsubscribing or acquaintances) you can effectively reduce the quantity of items in your news feed and significantly increase the quality.  This reduces the time you spend on Facebook and assures your getting the information you find most valuable.

Below are some how-to guides for managing your friends and the content you see on your Facebook news feed.  Keep in mind Facebook regularly changes the algorithm for the display of content in your news feed.  Make decluttering your Facebook newsfeed an on-going process to respond to these changes.

• How to Declutter Your Facebook News Feed Once and For All
• The One-Year Facebook Cleanse Using Birthday Notifications
• Use the Facebook Acquaintances Feature to Declutter Your News Feed