Facebook is always changing the way they do things and in the past 6 months or so, the biggest issue is that they no longer are showing you what you want to see in your news feed.
1 Recent Posts vs Top Stories
Make sure you are getting the recent posts and not the top stories or that you know which feed you are looking at.
By default, News Feed shows the most popular posts first. To temporarily view stories by most recent:
Click at the top of Facebook. Click See More in the left menu.
Select Most Recent.
Beware! It does not stay on the most recent setting! You have to constantly change it back. I prefer to see most recent.
2 Control your newsfeed preferences :
Your News Feed preferences help you control what you see on your News Feed. To view your News Feed preferences:
- Click
in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings and Privacy > News Feed Preferences.
To adjust your News Feed preferences:
- Click See First to make posts from people or Pages appear at the top of your News Feed. Learn about see first.
- Click Unfollow to unfollow a person, Page or group. Learn about unfollowing.
- Click Reconnect to follow a person, Page or group that you unfollowed in the past. Learn about reconnecting.
- Click Snooze to restart, stop or add more time to your snoozes. Learn about snoozing.
3. Get Notifications.
And then remember to look at your Notification feed! This one is sort of controversial if you are trying to limit your time on Facebook. The Social Dilemma talked about turning off notifications if they are making you look at your phone/computer at all hours of the day. The notifications though are how you find past posts and comments you made.
4. Follow Your Groups Feed.
When you click on the group icon at the top of your Facebook account, it takes you to the post that are coming from the groups that you have joined. If you are on your computer, you can see a list of the groups you manage or are in on the left hand side. You can click on any group and see only the posts from that page and scroll to read what you want to read. Click on any group to read the posts from that group.
5. Like pages as your page!
I have only seen this on my phone so far. There is a way to like or follow pages as your own page and see the feed from only those pages. I don’t see it on my view from my computer.
Responsible Social Media
Responsible social media use has been brought to the forefront with the latest documentary “Social Dilemma”. While it give much to think about, it opens up the discussion and directions for research on how social media is affecting our lives and also the massage profession. The discussions have gotten really ugly at times with the immediacy of posts and comments bringing out the best and worst of us. It has also helped bring information and connection to massage therapists that may not otherwise get that support.
Facebook of course has it’s own view of things and has posted a rebuttal (PDF) to the issues the movie brings up about addiction, advertising, algorithms, data and polarization.
One of the things I would love to see are more groups of massage therapists getting together in person (post covid) or getting together via zoom or other platforms in small groups for discussion and support.