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Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get

Kill your Facebook. Seriously. You'll feel so liberated. And showing people pictures of your recent life when you meet them or email them is so fun and you get so much more attention and conversation out of it. Best decision of my life!

riebschlager 10y ago
Absolutely. I deactivated mine back in January and I most definitely do not miss it.
- satori99 10y ago
  I have never had an account. The very idea of it was repugnant to me, even when it was launched. I think it mostly because of the must-use-real-name thing, which was the complete opposite of the way I used the Internet at the time. But also because I like being un-contactable by people I have known in the past. Unfortunately, my sister got a lot of "what happened to your brother?" messages, but they have mostly stopped now. Facebook still creeps me out.
lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
I deactivated my Facebook account for over three years, reactivating about 18 months ago. There is an initial feeling of liberation, but I ended up regretting it. I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately. Deactivating was just an easy way to avoid the headaches rather than going through the work of curating what I wanted to see. Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again.
- jupiter90000 10y ago
  Everyone has different experiences with this stuff. I deactivated for a while, then went back and 'curated' the hell out of it. After I did that, I realized the only interactions I was getting from it for a while could mostly be had via other websites, in-person, by phone and text, and deactivated a few months back again. Although yesterday, I logged in solely to download a picture my wife wanted I had of her then instantly deactivated again, if that counts. Since I weaned myself down majorly by curating the content severely for a while, almost no one had been griping to me about 'why aren't you on facebook?' when I stopped using it this last time. And I feel even less compelled to go back on. I enjoy having a sense of privacy, free time to do other things (I have that 50 minutes a day/whatever to do other stuff with now), and I think a better respect for the value of the precious time left in my life. I hope I never get drawn back in to using it.
elliotec 10y ago
I mean, it sounds okay to be liberated, but what if you just don't spend 50 minutes on it per day? Also, what about the argument of keeping in touch with all your high school friends and distant relatives? What about all the things I would've found out on facebook that I'm now missing out on?
- darkclarity 10y ago
  Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses. The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is that important. There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.
  - notliketherest 10y ago
    > The things that happen on Facebook don't matter Makes me think Facebook is like Reddit but with people you know.
  - ctrl_freak 10y ago
    > The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. In my own experience, that's just not true. Facebook has facilitated lots of social interactions for me that simply would not have happened otherwise. Some examples: - I was doing an internship in Australia for a few months. I posted a picture of the beach on Facebook, an old friend from highschool whom I hadn't talked to in years saw it, commented that I should come visit her in Melbourne. I did, and we met and caught up on life. - A friend of mine invited me to go to a music festival with her friends. She added me to a group message on Facebook that they were using to plan logistics, etc. After the festival, we continued using the chat to plan other social activities. - Casual acquaintances that I met once or twice invite me to parties, etc. Can these things happen without Facebook? Technically, I suppose so. Realistically, I think they would happen less frequently. IMO there's a big difference between Messenger/Events/Groups (facilitates a lot of real interactions) vs News Feed/Profiles (stalking other people).
bufordsharkley 10y ago
I didn't deactivate, but I made my profile link to my personal website and haven't logged in for a couple years.
optforfon 10y ago
I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing
- RottenHuman 10y ago
  Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine. What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?
  - chimprich 10y ago
    Maybe you can handle your social life fine but some of us who are more incompetent at it like the assistance of some automation. I'm only partly joking.
    - RottenHuman 10y ago
      I don't know about that. I'm just honestly confused what Facebook offers for those purposes that "traditional" tools don't.
      - sp332 10y ago
        Those sound like tools for very immediate, personal attention. Facebook allows for that (like messaging or writing on someone else's timeline directly), plus a bunch of intermediate levels. For example I can post 200 photos from my vacation in an album, and it just shows up as a single item in my friends' timelines. Any of my contacts can browse it if they want, but it doesn't take up disk space in their inboxes, they can start a conversation connected to any individual photo, and it's not as insistent as if I'd sent them in an email. And if I really want someone to see it, I can tag them or just message them with the link. Facebook also serves as an auto-updated contact list. If I update my email or phone number, many of my contacts won't have the new information. FB doesn't have that problem. In fact I can put my phone number and email on my FB profile and my contacts can optionally auto-sync that info right to their phones so it is always up-to-date. It's possible to be "friends" with someone but not "follow" them so you don't see their posts in your normal timeline but you still get their contact info. You can also make closed or open groups which are helpful for event planning and multicast messages, and "friend lists" which let you customize the reach of each post. I guess you could do that last one with email too.
tallanvor 10y ago
Not reading Facebook posts with any regularity can be a good way to improve your mood and not have to worry about what your life looks like compared to anyone else. But it's unfortunately now the biggest messaging app out there. I switched to only having Messenger installed on my phone. If I really want to visit the site, I do so through the browser, and I post once or twice a year. I also have an extremely small list of friends on their compared to most people I know. This has let me strike the balance between being able to contact people easily and not feel like Facebook is a daily part of my life.
Kiro 10y ago
I spend many hours a day on Facebook and couldn't be happier.
kbart 10y ago
Why another extreme? I spend 30-60 min on FB just to check events and answer messages, I don't think that's a waste of time, because it's still the fastest/easiest way to maintain relations with many not-very-close people and get information of the local events. I don't post anything and usually don't read other's posts and I don't go by my real name. I think it's strange that every time discussion about Facebook pops-up, people usually assume that FB users waste immense amount of time on it.

riebschlager 10y ago

Absolutely. I deactivated mine back in January and I most definitely do not miss it.

satori99 10y ago
I have never had an account. The very idea of it was repugnant to me, even when it was launched. I think it mostly because of the must-use-real-name thing, which was the complete opposite of the way I used the Internet at the time. But also because I like being un-contactable by people I have known in the past. Unfortunately, my sister got a lot of "what happened to your brother?" messages, but they have mostly stopped now. Facebook still creeps me out.

lazzlazzlazz 10y ago

I deactivated my Facebook account for over three years, reactivating about 18 months ago. There is an initial feeling of liberation, but I ended up regretting it. I realize now that I should have just shaped my use to fit my needs: unfriend or unfollow people I don't care to follow, write more messages rather than scrolling through the newsfeed, and join events and groups more deliberately. Deactivating was just an easy way to avoid the headaches rather than going through the work of curating what I wanted to see. Now I actually use it to keep in touch with people I care about, rather than just pretend that's what I'm doing. I missed out on some things during my three years with Facebook off, and although I learned so much from having done it, I wouldn't do it again.

jupiter90000 10y ago
Everyone has different experiences with this stuff. I deactivated for a while, then went back and 'curated' the hell out of it. After I did that, I realized the only interactions I was getting from it for a while could mostly be had via other websites, in-person, by phone and text, and deactivated a few months back again. Although yesterday, I logged in solely to download a picture my wife wanted I had of her then instantly deactivated again, if that counts. Since I weaned myself down majorly by curating the content severely for a while, almost no one had been griping to me about 'why aren't you on facebook?' when I stopped using it this last time. And I feel even less compelled to go back on. I enjoy having a sense of privacy, free time to do other things (I have that 50 minutes a day/whatever to do other stuff with now), and I think a better respect for the value of the precious time left in my life. I hope I never get drawn back in to using it.

elliotec 10y ago

I mean, it sounds okay to be liberated, but what if you just don't spend 50 minutes on it per day? Also, what about the argument of keeping in touch with all your high school friends and distant relatives? What about all the things I would've found out on facebook that I'm now missing out on?

darkclarity 10y ago
Facebook doesn't just keep you in contact with old friends, it encourages you to stalk their public facing persona. There's none of the mystery and personal discovery that creates the bonds of friendship. It's not real friendship. It's like being a super fan to an amateur musician - a one way street with occasional responses. The fear of missing out? That's just one of the many addictive strings that Facebook tugs to manipulate you. The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. If something is important then it is far better to discover it outside of Facebook. In the end, nothing is that important. There are other ways of keeping up with old friends and relatives. Listen to gossip from other friends and family. Keep in contact with them using email, telephone and post. If you don't maintain some link then they should be resigned to the past - until some event occurs to trigger a re-established connection.
- notliketherest 10y ago
  > The things that happen on Facebook don't matter Makes me think Facebook is like Reddit but with people you know.
- ctrl_freak 10y ago
  > The things that happen on Facebook don't matter. In my own experience, that's just not true. Facebook has facilitated lots of social interactions for me that simply would not have happened otherwise. Some examples: - I was doing an internship in Australia for a few months. I posted a picture of the beach on Facebook, an old friend from highschool whom I hadn't talked to in years saw it, commented that I should come visit her in Melbourne. I did, and we met and caught up on life. - A friend of mine invited me to go to a music festival with her friends. She added me to a group message on Facebook that they were using to plan logistics, etc. After the festival, we continued using the chat to plan other social activities. - Casual acquaintances that I met once or twice invite me to parties, etc. Can these things happen without Facebook? Technically, I suppose so. Realistically, I think they would happen less frequently. IMO there's a big difference between Messenger/Events/Groups (facilitates a lot of real interactions) vs News Feed/Profiles (stalking other people).

bufordsharkley 10y ago

I didn't deactivate, but I made my profile link to my personal website and haven't logged in for a couple years.

optforfon 10y ago

I didn't have facebook all through college. A few years after I decided to get one and my social life blossomed. Now it's by far the most important piece of technology I use. I keep in touch with people all over the world - some who I met once in some distant country. So easy to hit up someone you haven't talked to in months. It's amazing

RottenHuman 10y ago
Maybe it's because I'm old, but I do all this with email phone calls and text messages and it seems to me to do the job just fine. What is the advantage of using Facebook to keep in touch with people that I'm missing?
- chimprich 10y ago
  Maybe you can handle your social life fine but some of us who are more incompetent at it like the assistance of some automation. I'm only partly joking.
  - RottenHuman 10y ago
    I don't know about that. I'm just honestly confused what Facebook offers for those purposes that "traditional" tools don't.
    - sp332 10y ago
      Those sound like tools for very immediate, personal attention. Facebook allows for that (like messaging or writing on someone else's timeline directly), plus a bunch of intermediate levels. For example I can post 200 photos from my vacation in an album, and it just shows up as a single item in my friends' timelines. Any of my contacts can browse it if they want, but it doesn't take up disk space in their inboxes, they can start a conversation connected to any individual photo, and it's not as insistent as if I'd sent them in an email. And if I really want someone to see it, I can tag them or just message them with the link. Facebook also serves as an auto-updated contact list. If I update my email or phone number, many of my contacts won't have the new information. FB doesn't have that problem. In fact I can put my phone number and email on my FB profile and my contacts can optionally auto-sync that info right to their phones so it is always up-to-date. It's possible to be "friends" with someone but not "follow" them so you don't see their posts in your normal timeline but you still get their contact info. You can also make closed or open groups which are helpful for event planning and multicast messages, and "friend lists" which let you customize the reach of each post. I guess you could do that last one with email too.

tallanvor 10y ago

Not reading Facebook posts with any regularity can be a good way to improve your mood and not have to worry about what your life looks like compared to anyone else. But it's unfortunately now the biggest messaging app out there. I switched to only having Messenger installed on my phone. If I really want to visit the site, I do so through the browser, and I post once or twice a year. I also have an extremely small list of friends on their compared to most people I know. This has let me strike the balance between being able to contact people easily and not feel like Facebook is a daily part of my life.

Kiro 10y ago

I spend many hours a day on Facebook and couldn't be happier.

kbart 10y ago

Why another extreme? I spend 30-60 min on FB just to check events and answer messages, I don't think that's a waste of time, because it's still the fastest/easiest way to maintain relations with many not-very-close people and get information of the local events. I don't post anything and usually don't read other's posts and I don't go by my real name. I think it's strange that every time discussion about Facebook pops-up, people usually assume that FB users waste immense amount of time on it.