Here’s an approach for how to use Facebook (and other social media sites) in a way that makes your life better:
Start clicking and liking based on what you’d like to see in the future, rather than based on what you feel like clicking on right now.
As you know, Facebook (and similar sites) monitor all your clicks and likes to determine what to show you. You can reduce the amount of clickbait, time-wasting posts, upsetting articles, or irrelevant news, by not clicking on that type of content. Facebook also gives you the option to indicate the type of content you don’t want to see anymore by “hiding” posts. Use that option when you are seeing content you don’t like, and Facebook will start showing you less of it.
I started exploring this issue when a friend complained that they received more content about babies on their news feed than they wanted to. I didn’t have the same experience. She mentioned that she often clicks on or likes the baby content. A cycle was created; she would like baby photo content, then Facebook would display more of it, leading to even more baby content for her to click and view. She ended up seeing far more about babies than is her ideal.
Facebook is a different product for each person, because it’s crafting itself based on your behavior. For instance, my newsfeed displays less photo content than other people’s, but has more posts where people explain their opinion on a topic, because I’m more likely to click on or like the latter than the former.
Each click and like has broader implications than the here and now; it impacts what you will see in the future. So it’s worth thinking about: what version of Facebook do you want to experience in the future?
Imagine a world in which eating a piece of chocolate cake leads to the appearance of more chocolate cake on your plate; skipping the cake, in favor of healthier options, will lead to more healthy options being displayed.
Choose what you feed yourself wisely!
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