Why I decided to "quit" Facebook

"Everything has to come to an end, sometime." --L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

I decided this week to stop going on Facebook. I haven’t yet deleted my account (and haven’t decided if I will), but I’ve taken the app off of my phone, and I’m committed to not visiting the site anymore. It pains me to write that, and I didn’t come to the decision lightly, but it’s how it has to be. (Ditto for Instagram, but I'm not really on there to begin with.)

I’m not the first person to quit Facebook, and I won’t be the last. As we have learned more and more about their privacy policies and fact-checking processes (or lack thereof), I suspect I am one of many people who has determined that the liabilities outweigh the benefits. But leaving Facebook isn’t that simple or that straightforward, and I have both personal and philosophical reasons for doing it.

When I first joined the site many years ago, for me it was a revelation. So easy to look up long-lost friends! Reconnect with high school and college acquaintances! Snoop discreetly on the lives of co-workers! But what made Facebook so enticing in the beginning was one of the reasons that I have decided to opt out. For every friendship that I was able to rekindle, there were at least three others in which, after the initial interaction, I remembered why we lost touch in the first place. And sometimes it was too much information about co-workers or business acquaintances – information that changed the way I viewed that person or made me think differently about them. 

Facebook also made me behave differently, and I found myself capturing moments specifically in order to post them, rather than sharing the joy of a moment. I let the “likes” and comments define the moment for me.

And let’s not forget the jealousy factor—particularly as a young mom, I would scroll obsessively through my feed, feeling desperately sad when looking at pictures of a birthday party to which my son wasn’t invited, or a “Mom’s Night Out” from which I had been excluded. I wanted to know, and yet I actually didn’t. Browsing through Facebook might inspire delight or depression, and I never knew which. My time on Facebook often ended up being an angst-ridden slog, rather than something that improved my mood or made me feel positive in going about my day.

As the years have gone by (and particularly since the 2016 election cycle), I’ve gone on Facebook less and less, and have shared much less of my life there than I had in the past. And then I started to feel like a voyeur – I wasn’t sharing my own life, but I was going in there to peek into all of yours? Creepy.

At its best, Facebook truly is a community, and allowed me to connect with people whose values I shared and whose friendships I valued. A lot of the time, though, it left me feeling frustrated, annoyed, or empty. 

I’ll always have Facebook to thank for some wonderful new connections, friendships re-established, and enhanced rapport with business colleagues and other acquaintances. Staying in touch with these amazing people in new ways may be challenging, but I am committed to that task. Because being on Facebook was sometimes also just synonymous with being lazy for me. Far easier to send a quick “HBD!” message on someone’s birthday than to take the time to send a text or call, and it required far less energy than sending a card or gift. Those used to be the steps I took to show someone that I cared about them, and I need to start that again.

If we are or have been friends on Facebook, know that I still love you and care about you, and that I still want to be in touch. I honor the space from which we shared all those updates, and I’ve loved seeing your exploits, hearing your thoughts, and watching your kids grow up. Look for me in other spaces, and I’ll do the same. And know that even though you won’t see my name on your feed anymore, you’ll always have a “thumbs-up” in my book.