My Facebook free February could become a Facebook free life

Signing off for a month has made Ellie O’Byrne wake up to the fact that she needs to use social media and not let it be a ‘digital heroin’

Blame it on Trump. Blame it on hours of productivity lost in January to reading venomous political comment threads in the early weeks of the new US presidency. Blame it on my 12-year-old daughter’s first phone, and my increasing awareness of how she mimics my reflexive reach for my device in response to notification tones.

But when I got an email about Facebook Free February in my inbox on the first day of the month, I dived straight in. Within minutes, I downloaded the “FFF” logo to put up as my profile picture, composed a short farewell post and unceremoniously deleted the Facebook and Messenger apps from my phone. On my laptop, I trusted myself simply to log out rather than going the whole hog and suspending my account. I mean, come on: I’m not an addict, right?