July 5, 2013

You log into Facebook, hoping to virtually kick it with your homies from various places. You check out your News Feed to see what’s going on in the lives of people that are closest to you. Instead of friendly faces, however, you discover that your feed is filled with strangers you don’t recall ever adding. You start to hover over their faces to uncheck “Show in News Feed,” in an effort to save your remaining Internet sanity … until you realize it’s been more than an hour and you’ve effectively shunned 100 Facebook contacts into social network oblivion. Facebook lists can help assuage the pain of maintaining more than a thousand online friendships, but sometimes the only option left for you is the ominous Unfriend button.

A study conducted by the University of Edinburgh Business School has discovered that having more Facebook friends can cause higher levels of stress because you tend to spend a lot of time maintaining a semblance of a life far more perfect than your reality, masking any habits that onlookers may deem inappropriate. Another recent survey found that there are many, many reasons why we’re tempted to hit unfriend. Hey, there’s no reason for you to pretend to be something you’re not, just like there’s no reason to feel like a total jerk for wanting to unfriend a “friend” – we’ve all been there, and it’s perfectly understandable why you want to purge yourself of your non-friend friends.

With that said, unfriending on Facebook entails a certain level of scrutiny and finesse. It’s been found to produce life-altering results, and the digital act can bring with it some real-world conflict, if said unfriended person realizes what you’ve done.

Although dramatics are sometimes inevitable, you don’t have to go through all that drama needlessly. For anybody who takes their social networking life seriously, ending a Facebook friendship is almost comparable to having to face impending doom – for you to come to terms with your decision, you have to go through the five stages of unfriending first.

Read the whole article here: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/culling-your-facebook-flock-prepare-for-the-5-stages-of-unfriending/

Check out all my articles: http://www.digitaltrends.com/users/jam_kotenko