Myspace
I Use Facebook Like Myspace — And It Saved My Brain
I use Facebook always like Myspace.
Create. View. Don’t view others all the time. Create, leave, and never get addicted.
Over the years I left all the time because I am an 80s/90s girl that lived for phones vs messaging. We called people. We didn’t stalk their stories. We talked. We didn’t scroll. That’s the muscle memory I still have.
It is doing this that I noticed people with severe mental health write nonsense — especially when they are experiencing a breakdown. The feed turns into a crisis journal. Raw, unfiltered, and nobody’s stopping to say “log off and breathe.” I know, because I’ve been close to that edge in my ashes year. The difference was I didn’t post it. I wrote it in a notebook and walked away.
I noticed by keeping to myself, analyzing instead of really being like others, you are able to quiet the noise on social media. I don’t chase the algorithm. I’m not performing for likes. I post what matters — mental health, 1, I survival, rising from ashes to butterfly — and I leave. My peace is not in the comments.
It’s funny now Myspace is coming back.
Myspace taught us coding and HTML. We spent time creating rather than scrolling and depleting brain cells. You wanted a glitter background? You learned `<body bgcolor="">`. You wanted your song to autoplay? You figured it out. We were producers, not products. We built pages, ranked our Top 8, and curated our identity on purpose.
As a PhD student — of life, of hard knocks, of my own brain — you study, research, analyze, question, and learn about hypothesis, which we learned in school. That’s what Myspace demanded. Critical thinking.
Critical thinking is lacking on FB. The feed decides what you see. Rage bait wins. Nuance dies. People don’t ask “is this true?” They ask “will this go viral?”
But Myspace? We learned. We tested. We broke our page and had to fix it. That’s hypothesis. That’s trial and error. That’s science.
So I brought Myspace rules to Facebook. I create. I don’t consume. I analyze. I don’t absorb. I question. I don’t react. I log on with intention and log off with my sanity.
I’m 51. Biracial. A woman who went from ashes to cocoon to butterfly by protecting her mind. Social media didn’t raise me — the 80s and 90s did. Rotary phones did. HTML did.
Facebook is a tool. Not a home.
And I refuse to be addicted to a place that profits when I’m broken.
Cathryn M. Murray
Salem, Oregon | August 1, 2026
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