M Thomas Apple Author Page

It’s been six weeks since I decided to take a break from Facebook. Back in mid-January I took a screenshot to show students how to figure out which apps they used the most (Line, by far, in case you’re wondering, followed by YouTube… not surprisingly, since my students are all Japanese).

It was a little shocking to see that I was spending over 8 hours a week on FB on my iPhone. My train commute is about an hour and a half each way, and I go to campus four days a week. So basically I spent 2/3 of my train time looking at FB posts.

Yuck. What a waste of reading time.

I deleted the app from my iPhone and iPad, and made conscious efforts to avoid visiting my pages on my desktop PC and laptop. (I kept Messenger to keep in touch my friends and colleagues. And of course this blog automatically posts to FB and elsewhere because of links…)

Since then I’ve managed to write and edit two academic papers, prepare for a new intercultural communication class from April, and finish all class materials for my current psychology in language education graduate class for the next five weeks.

And two whole paragraphs in my SF novel.

Grrr.

In the interim, I did go ice skating with my kids, where I threw my back out so badly it’s taken a month to touch my toes…