Facebook.

We all either have an account on the platform or used to have one at one point. You may have one for many reasons, such as connecting with your family from across the world, catching up with your high school friends or simply using it as a place to share your Odyssey articles.

If you’re like me, I use my account for all of the above, and after using it since sixth grade, I noticed that I have become more and more addicted to Facebook. I would open it as soon as I would wake up, as I wait for each of my classes to start, during my lunch break, while waiting for a meeting to start and before I'd go to bed.

I would even open the app on my phone and scroll mindlessly for minutes on end, sometimes doing that instead of my homework or other more important tasks. Sometimes, it would even affect my mood negatively due to my realization that I wasted a lot of time when I could have been doing something productive in its place.

So, earlier this year, I made a promise to myself to not use Facebook as much as I used to.

I took a break from it for a month, in which I did not open it unless it was for Odyssey purposes, such as sharing to my community’s Facebook group. I removed the app from my phone and kept it logged off on my tablet and laptop.

To this day, I only log on either on my tablet or laptop once or twice a day at the most just to see what my friends and family are up to for a few minutes, all before logging off again and continuing my day with more productive things.

I knew I wasn’t the only one who had this modern-day, strange addiction to this particular social network, but I wanted to know exactly why. After doing some quick research, I noticed that Facebook purposely makes you click on the app multiple times a day. Because of its huge popularity (an estimated 864 million members active on the platform), it has become associated with being the thing to do when you’re bored. The human mind tends to wander when we’re bored, and therefore, we have this tendency to open the app just to kill time and boredom.

Facebook has become so much more than just a way to check up on friends and family. It has become our source of news and entertainment, a place to share our voices on events that matter to us and the most popular place to share our Odyssey articles. The all-in-one versatility of the app can cause the red number notification on our phones to seem like it never goes away, which really stressed me out at times, having me open the app just to make it disappear.

After decreasing my usage of Facebook, I have become more productive, my grades have significantly increased and I realized that there is so much more to the world than sharing a funny dog video on my feed just to see how many likes it can get.

So go outside, read a book, get off your phone and enjoy life!