Tips for giving up Facebook for Lent

It's six weeks. Don't kid yourself into thinking it'll be easy.

Web-surfing Catholics the world over were momentarily terrified last Wednesday when prominent Catholic recording artist John Michael Talbot (who calls himself the "Techno Monk") suggested that he may give up Facebook for Lent. And then it all turned out to be a clever joke and the world resumed turning. 

But many other Lent observers (not just Catholics, but Lutherans, Anglicans, and Evangelicals alike) are also thinking of what their second favorite thing is and how they can give it up (no one really wants to give up their favorite thing--like chocolate or wine). For those of you who really want to go the distance and may be thinking of giving up Facebook for Lent (which, by the way, starts this week), don't set yourself up for failure by thinking you can just give it up cold turkey without any side effects. That's not realistic. Six weeks is a long time (think of how many Facebook birthdays you'll miss in that time), so you need to go into it with a game plan. Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself first:

1) Am I mentally and physically prepared to give up Facebook entirely starting right now?

For those of us who work all day on computers, Facebook is a necessary distraction akin to blinking or getting a drink of water. You need a mental break from the task at hand, you check your Facebook news feed really quickly to see what's going on with your friends. You've just spent hours toiling over a grueling task and you've finally finished--you jump on Facebook to look at your friends' cute puppy pictures or like your sister's status. Or you post a vague status update like, "It's going to be a long day..." or "wish I were anywhere but here : ( " Are you prepared for the mental and physical fallout that will come from suddenly losing this? 

2) Should I go cold turkey or wean myself?

If you thought long and hard about the first question and realized that if you're going to be truthful, you would have a hard time giving up Facebook suddenly and completely, then consider weaning yourself slowly. Like giving up cigarettes, cut yourself down to no more than two status updates a day, working your way down to one, and then one every couple of days, until you can go the whole six weeks without a passing glance at Facebook. Of course...some might argue that the whole point of Lent is to give up the thing you love suddenly and completely for six weeks, but some of us need to take baby steps! If you really want to get technical, you could argue that the original point of Lent was to NOT EAT for 40 days, and nobody does that anymore, so you could just go with the flow and just give up Facebook during daylight hours.

3) Does my Facebook mobile app count?

Yes, it does. But Places doesn't, so feel free to keep checking in.

When you're in your darkest hour and grappling with the urge to check your Facebook news feed, just ask yourself: What Would Mark Zuckerberg Do?

Image source: Dvorak.org