Six Weeks Without Facebook
Field Notes On Social Media Sobriety and Sanctification
I left Facebook six weeks ago.
It wasn’t an impulsive decision or a frustrated break. It felt like closure; as if I was finishing a conversation that had been happening quietly inside me for years. I’d sensed it for a long time, but this time it wasn’t burnout. It was revelation. I saw what it was doing to us, and what it was doing to me. I left because I could no long deny the insistent nudge that usually precedes something sacred: it’s time to move on.
I didn’t leave to make a statement. I wasn’t angry or afraid. I just knew that my time there had run its course, and to keep pretending otherwise would be a kind of dishonesty. So I stepped away. I left my account active as an archive, and I still post through other apps now and then. But I rarely engage. I check in occasionally on family and favorite friends, but I rarely engage. And with each passing week, I find myself caring less about the noise I’ve left behind.
I wasn’t sure what to expect after leaving. I thought maybe I’d feel lonely or disconnected. Instead, I felt relief. Not the kind of relief that comes after finishing a hard task, but something deeper — like my soul exhaled.
The impulse to check notifications or scroll for updates began to fade. I realized how much of my attention had been quietly tethered to the platform. It wasn’t addiction as much as habit. It was a constant low hum of curiosity, the sense that I might be missing something important. Acute FOMO.
Without that hum, the world feels different. More alive. More real.
The matter isn’t entirely settled in my soul. I haven’t disappeared from the digital world entirely. I’m still on other platforms. I still post to Facebook through secondary apps, and I check in occasionally on friends and family. I’m about two degrees away from it all. I remain close enough to sense the pull, far enough to breathe. Every day I rethink that balance, wondering whether it’s sustainable long term. I keep adjusting, changing my mind about what distance looks like. For now, it’s where I am.
A Change in Affections
John Wesley once described the Christian life as being marked by “a change of affections.” He used that phrase in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, where he wrote that salvation doesn’t just adjust our behavior, it reorders our loves. In Methodist thought, this idea became central: sanctification isn’t about sin management; it’s about the redirection of desire. The Spirit doesn’t make us less passionate, but rather makes us rightly passionate, turning our attention away from noise toward love.
That’s the best language I have for what’s happening in me. For years, I prayed to be free from the compulsion to stay on top of the news cycle, to weigh in on every issue, to keep up with every controversy, and I think that is finally happening. I used to see a kind of inner peace in others that I couldn’t find in myself. But I knew it existed. I felt drawn toward it from deep within the Spirit, even when I stumbled around its edges.
Now, little by little, that peace seems to be emerging from the shadows.
Last Sunday morning my wife and I were driving to church. The air was bright and sharp with autumn, and strong breezes sent leaves tumbling across the road and raining down on top of us. It was glorious!
The world looked like it was in high definition. No filters. No edits. Just beauty that didn’t need me to frame it. I remember thinking: so this is what attention feels like when it’s not divided.
I’ve seen leaves fall every year of my life. But this time, it felt like seeing them for the first time.
That’s the best way I can describe life after Facebook. It’s not that the world got quieter; it’s that I finally did.
A few nights later, I found myself lying on the couch in the quiet, talking to God and talking to myself. No background noise. No screens. Just stillness. I felt peace settle over me, and not the shallow kind that comes when everything’s going right, but the deeper kind that feels like permission. Permission to be.
And yet, right behind that peace came guilt. That old, pastoral instinct whispering, You should be doing something. You should be contributing. You should be visible.
Even rest felt suspicious. I had to sit with that for a while. This long-invisible tension between being and doing, presence and performance, was coming into focus.
I think that’s when it hit me: the guilt wasn’t coming from God. It was coming from a version of myself I had built for other people: the pastor, the content creator, the one who always had something meaningful to say. That self isn’t gone entirely, but it’s quieter now. And I’m not sure I miss him.
A Moment of Zeal
A few weeks ago, I broke my own rule and engaged in a divisive political post made by one of my friends. I know the man who made the post to be intelligent and thoughtful. I believe him to be a man of integrity. That’s probably why it bothered me. I really felt this divisive post was beneath him.
I felt compelled to say something — to challenge it, to call him higher. I told myself it was about truth. But if I’m honest, it was zeal. That same old zeal that thinks correction is a form of care.
I’ve had time to reflect on it since. At first, I felt like I let myself down. Then I let God down. But now, I don’t think God was angry. I think He was reminding me how easily I’m drawn back into the cycle of outrage and rivalry. It’s not that the conversation was wrong; it’s that my heart wasn’t quiet enough for it to be redemptive.
This is how mimesis, the imitation of desire that René Girard wrote about, works. We mirror each other’s passions, even our indignation, until our identities get wrapped up in the contest itself. I didn’t leave Facebook to be better than anyone else. I left because I no longer want to live inside that pattern.
Attention, Affection, and Vocational Guilt
Something in me is healing. My attention feels different. It’s not that I’m learning to focus harder — it’s that I’m learning what deserves focus.
I used to think attention was about discipline. Now I see it as a form of love.
When I sit with someone now, I listen without pretense. I don’t mentally compose a response. I don’t half-listen while imagining what I might post later. I just listen. And in that listening, I feel present; not as a chaplain or writer or minister, but as a person.
That’s the thing social media was stealing: not time, but presence. The ability to simply be in the world without trying to narrate it.
Still, I wrestle with vocational guilt. There’s a part of me that measures worth by output. Such as sermons preached, blogs written, posts shared. It’s the part that confuses faithfulness with productivity.
When that voice grows loud, I have to remind myself what kind of work I was actually called to. The work of presence. The slow, unmeasured work of care.
I’m beginning to see that the ministry of Christ was not about omnipresence, but about embodiment. God didn’t choose to broadcast from the heavens. He chose to dwell in a solitary body on earth.
Falling Away from Noise
I don’t want to make a hero out of disengagement. This isn’t about moral superiority or romanticizing silence. It’s about honesty.
The truth is, my relationship with social media has always mirrored my relationship with noise. I told myself I needed it to stay informed, to stay relevant. But deep down, I was feeding an old fear… the fear of being forgotten.
Stepping away hasn’t erased that fear, but it’s exposed it for what it is: a counterfeit calling. I don’t think we’re made to keep up with everything. I think we’re made to attend to what’s been entrusted to us— the people in our care, the place where we are, the work in front of us.
The old affections still knock sometimes. The feed still calls like a familiar rhythm in the distance. But I’m not drawn to it the way I once was.
When I log in now, it feels like visiting a place I used to live. The walls are the same, but the light has changed. The noise doesn’t tempt me anymore; it tires me.
Wesley’s language lingers in my mind: a change of affections. Maybe that’s what this season really is. It is not withdrawal, not resignation, but conversion. The slow work of the Spirit turning my loves in a new direction.
I think this is what sanctification looks like for me right now:
to stop trying to know everything,
to stop trying to be everywhere,
to finally let go of the illusion of being needed by everyone.
The leaves are still falling outside my window as I write this. They’ve been falling for weeks. The trees will stand bare for a while before anything new appears. I think I’m okay with that.
For the first time in a long time, I’m not restless.
I’m not trying to prove that I’m here.
I just am. And that feels like peace.