Leaving Facebook

Leaving Facebook was a long time coming and, to tell the truth, I didn’t think I would actually go through with it. After all, so much is intertwined in that behemoth and to begin to untangle one cord, naturally leads to many cords – family, friends, businesses, hobbies. The more I thought about it the more I thought it couldn’t be done, which, in itself, became a reason to do just that – cut the cord.

I have a few friends who have never had a Facebook account. One specifically said that she didn’t believe in it, like it was a mermaid or a unicorn, and you could opt to believe in it or not. I laughed at her then thinking that it was a funny thing not to believe in, but now I agree with her.  I no longer believe in Facebook.

I’m posting here because I want to let people know who are looking for the Letters & Journals Facebook page, why they won’t find it. It existed once upon a time and was filled mostly with links to interesting articles on the power of a letter, reasons why handwritten notes are better, the fascination with typewriters and so on. These things will still get shared, but now it will be on this website, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

My reasons for abandoning Facebook:

1. FoMO- The Fear of Missing Out malady is real, no matter how much you tell yourself you are fully aware of the pitfalls of such thinking, it is easy to fall into.
2. Cambridge Analytica
3. Too many ads
4. The fact that so much of our everyday life is woven into social media – all social media
5. Wasted time. I came across a phrase recently that said no one has ever come away from spending an hour on Facebook and thought to themselves, “That was an hour well spent.”
6. I do realize that I’ll occasionally miss finding out useful information such as the death of a friend in a faraway location, but I trust that I will find out what I need to know when I need to know it through other means. If the world is limited by Facebook communication, what is that communicating?
7. I will not miss seeing friends and relatives in unflattering self-revelations.
8. I will miss seeing friends share their joy and happiness.
9. I will miss seeing our grandsons’ antics.
10. I will miss laughing at memes that resonate with me.
11. I will miss sharing connections with people with whom I don’t normally interact.
12. I will miss all my history in photos that I took the time to upload and share.
13. Apparently I won’t miss all of the items I saved for future viewing because I never once went back to that massive collection.
14. I won’t miss endless scrolling, although I do still have Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
15. I will miss keeping up with local friends and their business offerings and events.
16.  I hope to discover the JoMO, the Joy of Missing Out and reclaim the brain-addled time of addictive scrolling.
17. Mr Zuckerberg’s decision to allow ads containing disinformation was one of the factors affecting my decision. Other broadcast entities are regulated, and even without regulation it is my belief that people and the corporations they manage, should act with integrity.

When you delete your Facebook account they give you 30 days to access your account in case you change your mind. This seems like a good idea if someone has second thoughts. I have until March 7 to log in and undo what I have done.

Someone could ask, “What about the other social media accounts?” and to that I would answer, that I don’t frequent them as often, and certainly don’t spend nearly as much time on any of them as I did on Facebook. Maybe that will change now that the scales of balance have come off-kilter with the loss of Facebook. Has lost time been re-found only to be lost again? I don’t think so, but time will tell.