Third time’s a charm
Deleting Facebook isn’t new. But this is my story, from beginning to end.
My relationship with Facebook was never healthy. Since 2005 when I first signed up, I deleted my account twice. I deactivated it many more times. It was too distracting. That was always the problem: a lack of focus. I needed to study for exams, but instead ended up lurking over photos of strangers for hours. I caught myself in the middle of a clicking marathon and thought to myself: this feels wrong. I felt creepy and it felt like a waste of time. I couldn’t focus on studying, and I really needed to study so I deleted it. That was 2006.
In 2010, I created a new account. I had some amazing conversations while reconnecting with friends. But soon after it became an obsession. I would check and check again. Why did the same nine profile photos keep showing up reminding me of the same people over and over again? There were no updates but I kept checking. The reflexes were real and alarming. It was emotional purgatory. For a long time I consumed Facebook like I consumed cigarettes, too many times in a day. It was never a casual experience.
In 2011, I deactivated and eventually deleted my account for a second time when I moved to a new city. Even then the deletion process tried to prevent you from leaving: Oh you want to delete your account? It will take 30 days to delete it. You can come back ANY time. Back then, people still liked Facebook. They would ask: “How can you delete it? You’re moving to a new city, you can’t delete it. It will be so much harder to keep in touch.” It wasn’t. I wrote down all the emails of those I wished to stay in touch. Out of several hundred friends I ended up writing down only 30 names.
That same year I replaced Facebook with Twitter. It was a different experience. More detached learning and professional sharing, less emotional rabbit holes. A few years later I moved again — without Facebook — and had a job that was big on social media. Here I had to have a Facebook account so I eventually gave in and made one. This time I thought it would be different. I made all these rules and set boundaries to keep me in control. If I used it like LinkedIn then it would be ok, I thought. It wouldn’t be addictive — because if there is one thing we can agree on is that LinkedIn is definitely not addictive. I didn’t friend anyone that I was actually friends with, unless they were a professional link. I also never installed the app on my phone, used Messenger, played Facebook games, took any quizzes, or used my account to log into websites. This went on for a couple of years. I eventually friended friends. And then friends of friends. But the other rules remained.
Facebook, the tech giant, is a train wreck. Supporting authoritarian governments, its posts inciting the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal (now Emerdata Ltd., a part of the SCL Group) that influenced over 200 elections, including in Nigeria, the Czech Republic and Argentina. Acquiring everyone from Whatsapp to Instagram, to now publicly merging the three. And all the other data scandals plus the latest one. No one can keep up anymore.
But I thought as long as I can use it to share news on tech, the research I published, the blogs I wrote, and the eventual (ok, not so eventual) cat posts — these would be a good enough reason to stay.
I moved again. The more I moved, the more I met people from everywhere and I can’t lie. It’s nice to have people like your posts from all places in the world, from a multitude of countries and continents. Yet I don’t know half of my ‘friends’ that are now friends of friends of friends. Some people do not have the luxury to cut off Facebook from their lives. And for some people, Facebook is the internet. For a long time that guilt kept me from deleting the platform. Stay on and engage, because you can. But recently, I’ve been thinking more and more about the other platforms I’m sharing on: Twitter, Instagram, my website. Do I really need Facebook?
The one good thing about my Facebook newsfeed is that it is not an echo-chamber. Yet this truth cannot be put to use in a productive way. The platform is not made to have those interactions. I log on and my newsfeed is a mess. I’ve snoozed x person for the ninth time. I see a sexist post from someone I can’t unfriend. I guess I can snooze them too. In the end, I snooze most accounts because I just want a newsfeed with less noise. But that newsfeed isn’t reality, it’s a dream. And what about the rest of the 500 friends I have on there? Their posts never show up. The increasing number of greyed out profiles indicate more people leaving. There is almost zero control of what you see and how you see it. The ads run rampant and so does your connection with them. I noticed this via the Ad History feature and also when I downloaded my Facebook data.
I’m well aware I already dedicate my words and photos to other Facebook run (and owned) platforms — Whatsapp, Instagram. I am over giving the company my content on Facebook, the platform, as well. I really tried to make the platform work for me, but in the end I couldn’t. I really am over it.
