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I deleted (deleted, not deactivated) my Facebook profile 4 years ago. It had clearly become an addiction, kinda like my mobile phone is now (cost/benefit balanc

I deleted (deleted, not deactivated) my Facebook profile 4 years ago. It had clearly become an addiction, kinda like my mobile phone is now (cost/benefit balance of mobile phone is still too good to throw away). I remember actually having withdrawals in the first few weeks. Not sure if it was withdrawals or muscle memory that kept kicking in to check my feed, but there was an element of angst not being connected to the feed. Now I am quite happy without it (almost liberated), and trying to spend that time I would have spent on Facebook doing something that adds value to my life like reading HN! Surprisingly my circle (more of a triangle) of friends still exists, even without Facebook.

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
Ex-heavy Facebook user here (multiple times per hour) - I stopped checking it altogether and uninstalled the app about 3 weeks ago, just to see how I would get on. I know exactly the feelings you're talking about. After a week cold turkey I'm now back to checking much more infrequently (a couple of times a day) but it takes a huge amount of willpower to use it passively and not like / comment / post anything. I'd delete my account altogether but I find the Messenger really useful and I manage a few pages / events on there, not to mention wanting to keep up with some distant family. It's amazing how they've managed to create this feeling of dependence. What's also amazing is just how much more productive I've been over the past few weeks without the constant (self-inflicted) interruptions!
- markatkinson 11y ago
  Yea totally. I suppose a lot of people are actually using Facebook for work and their businesses (and Tinder) and so can't really get rid of their account. Also, I feel quite smug when someone asks to add me and I can say I don't use it... Maybe that is douchy...
  - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
    Haha, the smugness seems pretty common around here. Each to their own I say. Still, I do secretly envy the ones like yourself who have managed to escape!
- benten10 11y ago
  I realize for an outsider it may feel like a support group or a bunch of complainers ranting, but I'd like to add here: Me Too! I left facebook late in 2011, for various reasons, but mostly because it was making me sad and depressed. I was an extremely heavy user before that. I can say for sure that leaving facebook has made me objectively happier and less sadder. I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it. Full Disclosure: I opened a different facebook account. JUST for family, because my mom didn't _believe_ that I didn't have a facebook. I open it maybe once in a couple of weeks, and have gone for many months without logging in. Here's something I'd tell to other people: if you feel depressed after using facebook, delete it. Forget about 'not keeping in touch', 'being a loner', etcetera. Your mental health is way, way, wayyy more important than knowing what your freaking high school acquaintance's third child had for lunch on a random day. Have a small group of close friends, and call them, hang out with them. Your larger group of friends will always be yours. If you need social networking, get snapchat (I'm a critic turned fanboy). It's fleeting, so you don't feel as bad about yourself, and people are not as annoying. Addendum: Here's how people make non-FB friends. A friend of a friend wanted help with grad schools, so I agreed to talk to her. We chatted on Skype (second encounter, EVER), and we ended up talking for an hour. She wanted someone to talk to and asked if we could talk again soon, and I didn't mind one more friend so we're skyping again soon. You make friends out of nowhere; don't need facebook for that. Facebook gives you the illusion you're 'in-touch' with everyone, when all you're doing is gathering 'intelligence' on their lives.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
    > I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it. I'm quite fortunate to have been quite successful in life, especially recently, so it's not this aspect that creates problems for me. It's the constant sharing of political / religious opinions and ensuing bickering (especially among my family) that gets me down. I've actually seen a few family relationships completely break down as a result of arguments over petty things on Facebook, with real life consequences. I'd rather not be exposed to any of that anymore and that was my reason for massively reducing my involvement in it.
- gnrme 11y ago
  It's the fear of missing out. All the social media services build their foundation on that addiction. Once you delete the accounts then the feeling slowly goes away and you get back to what life was like before all this nonsense started.
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    > It's the fear of missing out. All the social media services build their foundation on that addiction. Once you delete the accounts then the feeling slowly goes away and you get back to what life was like before all this nonsense started. And Facebook explicitly tries to prevent you from getting rid of that addiction. They have a "feature" that kicks in after a few days of non-use to incessantly remind you via email that you're missing out. So-and-so posted a picture, etc. As far as I can tell, there's no way to disable them without also disabling emails for event invites and direct messages, which is just shitty. I've had to setup gmail filters to get rid of them.
  - loceng 11y ago
    A caveat - if you have the skills and enough people in your life to actually facilitate a healthy lifestyle.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    I fear not missing out. If I need to hear about it, I will. I mainly use Facebook as a thing to waste time with while I'm waiting for it to be time to do something else.
- eswat 11y ago
  FYI you can use the Messenger app without having a Facebook account (at least before attaching Messenger to a Facebook account, not sure what would happen if you’ve already done so).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- markatkinson 11y ago
  Exactly, and I find not being invited to social events gives me a lot of time to do other things...
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    You can always say no to an invitation.
lsniddy 11y ago
This is was any addiction feels like. Your brain aggressively telling you to do something and rewarding you when you do. I've been addicted to other things, but never got that dopamine rush from facebook. From the looks of it though facebook appears to me more addictive, or at least more available than your average addictive substance.
- fucking_tragedy 11y ago
  Psychological addictions are insidious.
moron4hire 11y ago
I was fine with deactivation only. The way I saw it, I didn't much care to change the fact that my past was on Facebook. I just wanted to make sure my future wasn't. There is a certain bit of psychological hacking going on calling connections "friends". Facebook has allowed a lot of people to reconnect and stay in contact, but maybe that isn't a good thing. Maybe we're supposed to only have transient interaction with most people. Maybe not knowing more about our cousins or our friend's friends is a sort of social lubricant. It's easier to be polite to my bigoted grandfather at Thanksgiving if I don't have daily reminders of his racism and homophobia. Perhaps the fact that none of the kids I grew up with are on Twitter is a feature of Twitter. I could maybe get back on Facebook if I treated it like Twitter: I disconnect as soon as your stream turns to anything that even gives me the feeling of wanting to make a negative comment[0]. My twitter feed is full of a mix of on one hand very interesting people, and on the other very quiet people. I like it this way. [0] I'm mostly successful at avoiding making that negative comment, which is kind of scary considering how many negative comments I do end up making.
- benten10 11y ago
  Excellent points throughout. Strongly agree with all of them. >Maybe not knowing more about our cousins or our friend's friends is a sort of social lubricant. It's easier to be polite to my bigoted grandfather at Thanksgiving if I don't have daily reminders of his racism and homophobia This has actually been how I connect to my friends lately, haha. I ask them what they've been upto, and they mostly go "you know, the same thing on facebook". And then they remember I'm not on facebook, so we go on hours and hours of heart-to-heart bringing up one another up to date with our lives. As the resident twitter fanboy (most of my karma comes from one pro-twitter comment), I couldn't agree with you more. To be fair though, twitter can be sometimes toxic too, but then I just mute the people and they fade from memory. Twitter feels more like the community I _want_ to be a part of, and facebook used to be the kind of community that I didn't particularly like (i.e, the facebooked version of my friends and family). I'll repeat what I say often on HN: the Twitter network/community makes me feel smarter and more excited about things in life. Facebook... never did. It made me want to gain the 'likes' (I wish they'd rename it to something less emotionally attached).
LesZedCB 11y ago
Yup I did the same thing is 2012. It has been the best. Except reddit quickly moved in to fill the void. However, at least reddit is anonymous people, and I generally filter on subreddits that have positive communities and generally quality content. I guess you could really implement the same sort of filter with facebook though. I guess I just think the medium for sharing content on reddit or HN is better.
tushar-r 11y ago
Same here. Deactivate when on a business trip a few months back and I found myself opening the app first thing when I woke up. Feel so much better about it. Still have muscle memory that makes me open the page once in a while, but it really feels better without it. Of course, now reddit has taken over some of that time, but it is primarily in the sysadmin/tech subreddits, so it is less depressy :-P
bluedino 11y ago
I de-activated my profile 4 months ago. It's nice. It was weird at first, but now I can't imagine checking it so many times an hour. I removed the app from my phone because after swiping to unlock, my thumb had a muscle memory to touch the corner of the screen the icon was in. I'd be on Facebook without even thinking about it. I still check sports, news, and other sites on my phone. But it's read-only. ESPN, Instagram, Imgur. I'm not sharing anything. I'm not reading the same types of status updates from 'friends' every couple days (but then again I'm still here on HN). At Thanksgiving I had family members asking why I haven't been on Facebook. Even my own father had asked my aunt "What is he up to?", since he doesn't have an account but she's always telling him about food I posted or places I checked in at.
xux 11y ago
For those who find it too difficult to delete your profile, consider just unfollowing random people. Whenever I see an update, I ask myself "would I go to this person's birthday party?" Answer turns out to be "no" 95% of the time. Overtime, my timeline got more and more boring, and sometimes when I log on I would still see updates from days ago. Now I only check it once or twice a week because it's so useless.
- sharkweek 11y ago
  I use a slightly less stringent policy, "if I saw this person in the grocery store and they hadn't seen me yet, would I go say 'hi' or active avoid them" Deleted anyone who fell into the second bucket - worked out really nicely
  - xux 11y ago
    Yeah that could work too. Though personally I don't like deleting people.
- tajen 11y ago
  Follow people you don't know, unfollow friends, like things you don't like, change the email address, let it expire (If you don't log in at Yahoo for 1 year, they delete it), change the password, lose it, don't update your phone number. There's always a way back because they're really keen to give you access to your account, but as you progressively get bored of it, you'll feel like you don't need to install it on your new phone. On top of that, they now have to filter our false information. The only problem is to explain to the TSA agent that you've falsified your identity on a US corporation website, but I've given up going to US too ;)...

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago

Ex-heavy Facebook user here (multiple times per hour) - I stopped checking it altogether and uninstalled the app about 3 weeks ago, just to see how I would get on. I know exactly the feelings you're talking about. After a week cold turkey I'm now back to checking much more infrequently (a couple of times a day) but it takes a huge amount of willpower to use it passively and not like / comment / post anything. I'd delete my account altogether but I find the Messenger really useful and I manage a few pages / events on there, not to mention wanting to keep up with some distant family. It's amazing how they've managed to create this feeling of dependence. What's also amazing is just how much more productive I've been over the past few weeks without the constant (self-inflicted) interruptions!

markatkinson 11y ago
Yea totally. I suppose a lot of people are actually using Facebook for work and their businesses (and Tinder) and so can't really get rid of their account. Also, I feel quite smug when someone asks to add me and I can say I don't use it... Maybe that is douchy...
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  Haha, the smugness seems pretty common around here. Each to their own I say. Still, I do secretly envy the ones like yourself who have managed to escape!
benten10 11y ago
I realize for an outsider it may feel like a support group or a bunch of complainers ranting, but I'd like to add here: Me Too! I left facebook late in 2011, for various reasons, but mostly because it was making me sad and depressed. I was an extremely heavy user before that. I can say for sure that leaving facebook has made me objectively happier and less sadder. I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it. Full Disclosure: I opened a different facebook account. JUST for family, because my mom didn't _believe_ that I didn't have a facebook. I open it maybe once in a couple of weeks, and have gone for many months without logging in. Here's something I'd tell to other people: if you feel depressed after using facebook, delete it. Forget about 'not keeping in touch', 'being a loner', etcetera. Your mental health is way, way, wayyy more important than knowing what your freaking high school acquaintance's third child had for lunch on a random day. Have a small group of close friends, and call them, hang out with them. Your larger group of friends will always be yours. If you need social networking, get snapchat (I'm a critic turned fanboy). It's fleeting, so you don't feel as bad about yourself, and people are not as annoying. Addendum: Here's how people make non-FB friends. A friend of a friend wanted help with grad schools, so I agreed to talk to her. We chatted on Skype (second encounter, EVER), and we ended up talking for an hour. She wanted someone to talk to and asked if we could talk again soon, and I didn't mind one more friend so we're skyping again soon. You make friends out of nowhere; don't need facebook for that. Facebook gives you the illusion you're 'in-touch' with everyone, when all you're doing is gathering 'intelligence' on their lives.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  > I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it. I'm quite fortunate to have been quite successful in life, especially recently, so it's not this aspect that creates problems for me. It's the constant sharing of political / religious opinions and ensuing bickering (especially among my family) that gets me down. I've actually seen a few family relationships completely break down as a result of arguments over petty things on Facebook, with real life consequences. I'd rather not be exposed to any of that anymore and that was my reason for massively reducing my involvement in it.
gnrme 11y ago
It's the fear of missing out. All the social media services build their foundation on that addiction. Once you delete the accounts then the feeling slowly goes away and you get back to what life was like before all this nonsense started.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  > It's the fear of missing out. All the social media services build their foundation on that addiction. Once you delete the accounts then the feeling slowly goes away and you get back to what life was like before all this nonsense started. And Facebook explicitly tries to prevent you from getting rid of that addiction. They have a "feature" that kicks in after a few days of non-use to incessantly remind you via email that you're missing out. So-and-so posted a picture, etc. As far as I can tell, there's no way to disable them without also disabling emails for event invites and direct messages, which is just shitty. I've had to setup gmail filters to get rid of them.
- loceng 11y ago
  A caveat - if you have the skills and enough people in your life to actually facilitate a healthy lifestyle.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  I fear not missing out. If I need to hear about it, I will. I mainly use Facebook as a thing to waste time with while I'm waiting for it to be time to do something else.
eswat 11y ago
FYI you can use the Messenger app without having a Facebook account (at least before attaching Messenger to a Facebook account, not sure what would happen if you’ve already done so).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

markatkinson 11y ago
Exactly, and I find not being invited to social events gives me a lot of time to do other things...
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  You can always say no to an invitation.

lsniddy 11y ago

This is was any addiction feels like. Your brain aggressively telling you to do something and rewarding you when you do. I've been addicted to other things, but never got that dopamine rush from facebook. From the looks of it though facebook appears to me more addictive, or at least more available than your average addictive substance.

fucking_tragedy 11y ago
Psychological addictions are insidious.

moron4hire 11y ago

I was fine with deactivation only. The way I saw it, I didn't much care to change the fact that my past was on Facebook. I just wanted to make sure my future wasn't. There is a certain bit of psychological hacking going on calling connections "friends". Facebook has allowed a lot of people to reconnect and stay in contact, but maybe that isn't a good thing. Maybe we're supposed to only have transient interaction with most people. Maybe not knowing more about our cousins or our friend's friends is a sort of social lubricant. It's easier to be polite to my bigoted grandfather at Thanksgiving if I don't have daily reminders of his racism and homophobia. Perhaps the fact that none of the kids I grew up with are on Twitter is a feature of Twitter. I could maybe get back on Facebook if I treated it like Twitter: I disconnect as soon as your stream turns to anything that even gives me the feeling of wanting to make a negative comment[0]. My twitter feed is full of a mix of on one hand very interesting people, and on the other very quiet people. I like it this way. [0] I'm mostly successful at avoiding making that negative comment, which is kind of scary considering how many negative comments I do end up making.

benten10 11y ago
Excellent points throughout. Strongly agree with all of them. >Maybe not knowing more about our cousins or our friend's friends is a sort of social lubricant. It's easier to be polite to my bigoted grandfather at Thanksgiving if I don't have daily reminders of his racism and homophobia This has actually been how I connect to my friends lately, haha. I ask them what they've been upto, and they mostly go "you know, the same thing on facebook". And then they remember I'm not on facebook, so we go on hours and hours of heart-to-heart bringing up one another up to date with our lives. As the resident twitter fanboy (most of my karma comes from one pro-twitter comment), I couldn't agree with you more. To be fair though, twitter can be sometimes toxic too, but then I just mute the people and they fade from memory. Twitter feels more like the community I _want_ to be a part of, and facebook used to be the kind of community that I didn't particularly like (i.e, the facebooked version of my friends and family). I'll repeat what I say often on HN: the Twitter network/community makes me feel smarter and more excited about things in life. Facebook... never did. It made me want to gain the 'likes' (I wish they'd rename it to something less emotionally attached).

LesZedCB 11y ago

Yup I did the same thing is 2012. It has been the best. Except reddit quickly moved in to fill the void. However, at least reddit is anonymous people, and I generally filter on subreddits that have positive communities and generally quality content. I guess you could really implement the same sort of filter with facebook though. I guess I just think the medium for sharing content on reddit or HN is better.

tushar-r 11y ago

Same here. Deactivate when on a business trip a few months back and I found myself opening the app first thing when I woke up. Feel so much better about it. Still have muscle memory that makes me open the page once in a while, but it really feels better without it. Of course, now reddit has taken over some of that time, but it is primarily in the sysadmin/tech subreddits, so it is less depressy :-P

bluedino 11y ago

I de-activated my profile 4 months ago. It's nice. It was weird at first, but now I can't imagine checking it so many times an hour. I removed the app from my phone because after swiping to unlock, my thumb had a muscle memory to touch the corner of the screen the icon was in. I'd be on Facebook without even thinking about it. I still check sports, news, and other sites on my phone. But it's read-only. ESPN, Instagram, Imgur. I'm not sharing anything. I'm not reading the same types of status updates from 'friends' every couple days (but then again I'm still here on HN). At Thanksgiving I had family members asking why I haven't been on Facebook. Even my own father had asked my aunt "What is he up to?", since he doesn't have an account but she's always telling him about food I posted or places I checked in at.

xux 11y ago

For those who find it too difficult to delete your profile, consider just unfollowing random people. Whenever I see an update, I ask myself "would I go to this person's birthday party?" Answer turns out to be "no" 95% of the time. Overtime, my timeline got more and more boring, and sometimes when I log on I would still see updates from days ago. Now I only check it once or twice a week because it's so useless.

sharkweek 11y ago
I use a slightly less stringent policy, "if I saw this person in the grocery store and they hadn't seen me yet, would I go say 'hi' or active avoid them" Deleted anyone who fell into the second bucket - worked out really nicely
- xux 11y ago
  Yeah that could work too. Though personally I don't like deleting people.
tajen 11y ago
Follow people you don't know, unfollow friends, like things you don't like, change the email address, let it expire (If you don't log in at Yahoo for 1 year, they delete it), change the password, lose it, don't update your phone number. There's always a way back because they're really keen to give you access to your account, but as you progressively get bored of it, you'll feel like you don't need to install it on your new phone. On top of that, they now have to filter our false information. The only problem is to explain to the TSA agent that you've falsified your identity on a US corporation website, but I've given up going to US too ;)...