I was recently talking with some friends about the habit of spending too much time on Facebook, and I realized something about myself:
I’ve already followed my own advice from my last blog post. I’ve unfriended the addicts who constantly start arguments in apolitical posts. I’ve unfollowed the people who excessively post obnoxious political content. I hide the sources of annoying shared political content whenever I see it. And I’ve trained myself to just scroll past the political hate by the people who sometimes post hate and sometimes post stuff I want to see.
But I realized there’s another class of political content on Facebook: People who post intelligent, reasoned, non-hate based commentary, which prompts discussions rather than arguments.
Now, there’s nothing inherently *wrong* with this. Except that often I’ll decide I want to take a break for a few minutes, look at Facebook, read their post, then the ensuing discussion, perhaps write up my own response, get involved in the discussion, and check back several times to repeat this process.… Read more