KonMari and My Digital Life

I deleted 30-40% of the content from my Facebook timeline. It was time.

Digital clutter, including social media platforms, really deserves its own dedicated category within the KonMari pantheon of major categories. I would suggest it should be an added category at the very end of a KonMari journey: Clothes, Books, Papers, Komono, Sentimentals & Digital Life.

I actively post on my Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook accounts plus maintain two semi-active blogs—yet I had given little thought or effort to what it means to just keep adding digital content to all these platforms year after year. In the case of Facebook, now more than a decade!

I am near the end of my second KonMari journey and looking fresh at my declared 6th KonMari category of Digital Life. Should I preserve or delete? Or edit?

Do I want a publicly accessible virtual archive of my social media life—each year a mini epoch archived without a thought being buried but accessible to all under the newest year of content?

Does my social media “archive” spark joy?

I spent the last few weeks applying KonMari to my Facebook timeline. My timeline begins in early 2007 and I had filled it up over the years with a stream of random comments, family photos and life updates, links to quirky articles and surveys, and an absurd number of viral videos featuring kittens, puppies, birds, and baby otters.

Please note that I have already largely dealt with all the other major KonMari categories, especially photos within the Sentimentals category. Hone your spark joy discernment with the prior categories before leaping into your digital life! 

I have now swept through my Facebook timeline at least four times.

The first sweep:

* deleted any post that had broken or missing links

* deleted any viral videos that seemed pretty boring or irrelevant to me now

* deleted any post that clearly was an awkward or unpleasant memory

The second and third sweeps:

* eliminated most “tags” from other people unless I absolutely loved the photo or comment—and it really needed to be a powerful “zing” of spark joy to keep it

* deleted most animal videos unless it was “Hall of Fame” level favorite of mine

* deleted comments that were passing comments

For my fourth sweep I mostly viewed my timeline as I would making the final touches on a family photo album—keeping not too many and not too few posts per year.

A few things I learned or observed about myself in reviewing and editing almost 11 years of my Facebook posts.

During my lowest times I frequently posted chipper, funny or uplifting videos. I am sure I was trying to spread happiness to others, but I also became aware I was hiding from others how much I was struggling myself.

I still don’t have a solid sense of the line between sharing good fortune and accomplishments and the cringe worthy “humble brag.” When in doubt, I deleted it.

Baby otters spark joy! Bird antics really make me belly laugh. I saved the best in my timeline like a “Hall of Fame.”

Most importantly, social media is a platform for authentic self-expression and inauthentic selective self-projection. For heaven’s sake, since it is both things and they are desperately intertwined, feel free to go back and curate (delete) anything that doesn’t spark joy in the person you are today.