Life Without Facebook ~ A View From Gen Y #3
02/08/2012
It's 2004. You're a college freshman. You and your friends sign up for a new internet platform called Facebook. It becomes an interactive scrapbook of your life.
Flash forward 7 years. You disengage from Facebook. Why??
This is a special Diva Marketing quasi social media reality series with Gen Y Jessica Robyn who takes us into her world of Life Without Facebook .. and offers her insights into the question Why?
Diva Marketing/Toby: Jessica, you disengaged from Facebook on January 13th. It's been about 4 weeks without the Big F. What are you missing the most?
Jessica Robyn: I miss the entertainment I got from Facebook. Reading posts, seeing pictures, and playing games via Facebook. It was a great way to amuse myself when I had down time. Now I have a new obsession for crossword puzzles. I even found a trivia app on my phone to entertain me on the go. At least my new obsessions are educational!
Diva Marketing/Toby: How has life without Facebook influenced your relationship with people who you don’t usually keep in contact with on a consistent basis?
Jessica Robyn: It’s been interesting. I've reached out more to some college friends who I have not seen in a while. I actually found out that one of my old roommates, who lives in New York, was going to be in Rhode Island. I live in Massachusetts, so we ended up meeting for drinks in Providence which was pretty awesome.
- We haven’t seen each other in two years, but we still had a connection without Facebook which was pretty impressive.
Diva Marketing/Toby: What happens when those people who don’t have your eMail address or phone number need to get in touch with you?
Jessica Robyn: I perform at Rocky Horror Full Body Cast in Harvard Square. There was an occasion recently where someone from Rocky Horror had a few questions for me about something they were planning with the production.
I gave permission for people at the show to give her my cell number so she could contact me. But she never did. A couple of weeks later she told me she didn't like calling people on the phone and since she couldn’t find my Facebook she didn’t message me. I think if it was something of dire importance you could figure a way to contact me off of Facebook, even if you didn't have my contact information.
Diva Marketing/Toby: How about people you do keep in touch with on an ongoing basis. Tell us a story of how not having a Facebook page influenced you.
Jessica Robyn: Recently I had plans to go out with a friend; however, we just couldn’t agree on what to do for the evening so we ended up doing nothing. You know how that goes.
The next morning I started to miss Facebook. I am sure if I really wanted to go out I would have heard about a group of my friends going somewhere. Or I could have posted a status asking who was around and wanted to grab a drink. It didn’t really bother me about missing out on events until then.
Diva Marketing/Toby: Wondering what are the reactions from people who you meet who don’t know you’re not on Facebook and want to friend you.
Jessica Robyn: I haven’t encountered that yet. But I did meet someone right before I disabled my facebook. He was shocked I was going to disable my page and told me that Facebook was his only form of communication with his friends (I later found out he didn’t have a text messaging plan and doesn’t use his phone much. "Big L"). Needless to say, we didn’t keep in touch after that.
Diva Marketing/Toby: At this point are you glad you're off Facebook? Why?
Jessica Robyn: At this moment I would say absoultely. I have found myself being more productive throughout the day. Also instead of spending mind numbing hours sitting on facebook, like I mentioned before, I have been spending time doing cross words and trivia games ... working my mind which has been better than it turning to mush while mindlessly navigating around Facebook.
Diva Marketing/Toby: Anything that you're surprised about with life without Facebook?
Jessica Robyn: I think the most surprising element thus far has been all the exclusive deals or "you hear it first" type of deals that are promoted via Facebook. I heard of two different contests that in order to simply enter you needed to "like" their fan page, or a band releasing a song exclusively through Facebook. But for the most part, I haven't been too disappointed about my lack of Facebook yet.
To Be Continued ..
