Deleting Facebook and Reclaiming My Relationships
I will be deleting both my personal and professional Facebook accounts by the end of this year. I have been fantasizing about doing this for a long time, but never had the freedom to do so due to my connection with lots of organizations that use Facebook as a primary communication tool. Now that I’m working independently, I can make my own choices about how to share content and engage with my communities.
THE MORAL ISSUE
One of the reasons I am deleting Facebook is because their leadership and their founder has crossed over from being a moral concern to being an active threat to the average person. Whether its Facebook’s history of unethical practices, their slippery and dangerous approach to privacy, or innocent people being harmed due to misleading or unethical content – the stakes are high and people are getting hurt.
THE TIME ISSUE
Did you know that the average person spends over 85 hours a month on their phone alone? That doesn’t even include time on a computer for work or school. I read this statistic and thought, “That can’t possibly be me. I would never spend that much time on my phone.” To prove it, I looked up my hourly usages and sites visited. It turned out that Facebook stole between 6-11 hours of my life per week!
I tried all of the tricks to draw back my time. I deleted the app from my phone. Then I unfollowed everyone except close family and friends. But since I still had to be there to manage private groups and public pages for work, I kept getting sucked in. After all, everything about Facebook is designed to make you stay on their platform for as long as possible.
Deleting it altogether is clearly the healthiest option for me. And more importantly, it allows me to reframe personal interactions in my own way and according to my own values.
THE RELATIONSHIP ISSUE
When the chronological feed switched to an algorithm in 2016, we lost the ability to actually follow our friends in real time. This transition meant that the platform was now choosing what I saw based on my consumer habits. Barf.
By 2016, I was accustomed to “checking in” on my friends via Facebook. When the algorithm changed, I lost touch with anyone who wasn’t posting regularly, because their content wasn’t making into my feed. Again, barf.
I’m deleting Facebook so that I can return to the deeper, more personal nature of being in relationship to those I love and adore. I love sending and receiving letters, personal emails, and care-packages. I love hearing the voices of my dear ones on the phone. I love seeing the faces of my friends, colleagues, and co-conspirators on Zoom and, someday Covid-willing, in person.
I’m taking this opportunity to reclaim my relationships and reinvest in the health and quality of my interactions. I guess it boils down to authenticity. For me, Facebook is not the place for nuance, deep listening, and true connection. And since that is what I am always after — in my work, art, and relationships — it’s time to say goodbye.
This is not to say that you should leave Facebook. Everyone must follow their own star when it comes to social media. If however, you’d like to know more about how to delete your account, here is a good tutorial on how to remove your Facebook account. Hope this is helpful!
Here are some great places to find me outside of the realm of Facebook:
Love Letters: My newsletter comes out on the new and full moons and is packed with all sorts of wonderful information about my work as an artist, writer, and facilitator.
Instagram: Even though Instagram is owned by Facebook, I’m going to keep my personal and professional accounts active as my sole social media platform.
La Maison Boheme: “The Bohemian Home” is an online journal I’ve been writing since 2007. This is where I deep-dive about soulful living, modern bohemianism, radical homemaking, design, and my life as an artist.
I’ll keep my Facebook accounts up for another month or so as I download all my photos and data. I’m also trying to reach out to everyone individually with my contact info. My goal is to be completely free by the end of December.
Thank you, as always, for supporting my work as an independent artist. And thank you for reading.