Why I Left Facebook

I deactivated my Facebook in August.

It wasn't nearly as difficult as I suspected it might be. In fact, it was actually quite simple. I didn't feel a weight lifted from my psyche, nor did I have the slightest pang of regret.

It just was time to do it and I did it.

This article is not my attempt to wave a flag of self-righteousness by declaring that I have unshackled my mind and now occupy a higher cognitive plane than before. Nor is it a veiled form of advice to others. Instead, I offer this article as a commentary on how one person wrestled with the world's largest social media platform and decided it didn't survive a cost-benefit analysis.

Before we jump in, a quick caveat - There's a major theme in this article about political divisiveness. I do not believe my Facebook friends to be exceptionally partisan. Instead, I believe that there is something about Facebook that emboldened many of my friends to a deeper belief in their absolute rightness and then double-emboldened them to declare their rightness in a very confrontational way.

Here's are the phases of my relationship with Facebook...

PHASE I - THE POWER USER

I was an early adopter of Facebook and rapidly evolved into a 'power user.'

When I first discovered Facebook in 2008, my family and I were living on the other side of the planet from Charlotte - in Hyderabad, India. At that time, Facebook enabled us to interact with people we hadn't seen in years. This was a unique and exciting thing! To be able to catch glimpses of our home country while doing the expat thing... this, too, was a very welcome development. And people really enjoyed seeing our life in Asia, all of which made Facebook great fun in 2008.

In fact, it's fair to say that I loved Facebook in the beginning.

I posted at least once a day. More than one thousand people quickly became my 'friends.' I occasionally would post something lengthy, expressing my thoughts on a subject that I felt a need to discuss - mass shootings, illegal immigration, the overreach of the Federal Government, marriage equality, a Presidential election cycle... things like that. But I mostly did what just came naturally, which involved posting loads of travel pics, writing a clever quip now and again, as well as sharing countless unusual images that I found on the web.

PHASE II - THE FACILITATOR

Around 2010, I started to see an alarming rise in partisan bickering in my Facebook feed. My friends had (and have) a very diverse set of perspectives... yet a surprising number insisted on expressing those perspectives by WRITING THINGS AT EACH OTHER IN CAPS AND DECLARING HOW STUPID THE OTHER PERSON WAS!!!!

These didn't seem like the people I knew and liked. Often, those arguing were people that didn't know each other. Their common connection was my Facebook page.

I kept thinking - 'These two people would really, really enjoy each other's company if they got to know each other, but they're savaging each other on Facebook. Why are they doing this?'

In response, I developed my own shtick for Facebook. I became the guy that would facilitate difficult discussions by elaborating both sides of an issue and then getting people to engage on the topic without resorting to THE ALL CAPS THING!!! I did that for three years, then realized I was wasting my time. I saw that I was merely providing a new forum for the kind of bickering that I hoped to reduce.

More than a bit dejected about the political rancor I kept seeing, I decided I needed to figure out some other way forward...

PHASE III - THE SEEKER

By 2015, it got to the point that I looked at the Facebook icon on my phone with a mixture of dread at what I might find in there, as well as a lingering desire for the dopamine hit that it could still give. When I did go into Facebook, I almost never left feeling better for having done it.

Some of my friends had already bailed on Facebook by 2015. I asked those who remained if they were bothered by the huge amount of bickering on the platform. Not surprisingly, everyone said they were. And many of them offered the same advice...

"I don't see anything from more than half of my friends. I've mostly blocked them."

I was surprised by this. How had our society arrived at a place where the words 'friends' and 'blocked' could so comfortably occupy the same sentence? Without judgment, I would gently nod my head and say something like... "Yeah, but then I'd only see people's kids' swim lessons or what last night's appetizer looked like... and I candidly don't care about any of that."

The other person would often just laugh and throw their hands up. "I get it. But that's Facebook."

PHASE IV - THE 2016 ELECTION

My dilemma moved to 'existential crisis' during the 2016 US Presidential election.

Whatever it is about Facebook that enrages people when presented with a true diversity of perspectives, the Trump-Clinton race ramped it up to a new level. Some of my Facebook friends called each other 'Nazis,' 'racists,' 'libtards,' 'traitors,' 'idiots,' 'fascists,' 'communists' and a variety of other names. I knew that these descriptions didn't fit and stood back in astonishment as people devoured each other, destroying the last possibility for civil discourse.

PHASE V - THE PATIENT GOES TERMINAL

I stopped logging into Facebook as much around October of 2016. I would still go into Facebook now and again, just to see if there was anything worth looking at. Then one day, the negative feelings subsumed whatever might have been left of the dopamine hit that it used to give me.

In August, I pulled up Google and searched on 'How to delete Facebook.' I discovered you cannot delete an account, you can only deactivate one. This means I can log back onto Facebook at any time and reactivate my account.

I deactivated and haven't looked back.

THE RESULTS

How has this changed things over the last few months?

• I have more time - I give the time that I once gave to Facebook to other things. My professional and personal life benefit from this re-purposing of time.
• I'm 'memeless' - I choose carefully where I get my news and I also choose what commentary I read on that news. The best part, now my news is not imparted along with memes of Willy Wonka or Angry Cat.
• I'm more contented - My psyche doesn't consume the political anger of others anymore. This had led to an increase in my overall contentedness. This makes me better company for those around me... and for myself.
• I use Instagram much more often - It is with acknowledged irony that I admit to a sharp increase in my use of Instagram, a Facebook company. People use Instagram to post pictures and it doesn't have headlines, political debates or lengthy discussions of any sort... I love it.

IN SUMMARY...

Overall, I'm glad I made this change. While it's certainly not going to be a choice that most people will make, I can definitively say that my life sans Facebook is simply... better.

@TriquetraIT on Twitter