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To me, Facebook provides enough value that I don't feel the benefits of deleting it outweigh the benefits of keeping it. Without it, I have no connection at al

To me, Facebook provides enough value that I don't feel the benefits of deleting it outweigh the benefits of keeping it. Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while. LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on LinkedIn. Plus, LinkedIn has its own host of privacy issues, so it's not really a great replacement in the sense of improving privacy. There are also the useful community aspects. I often find out about local events through Facebook. I suppose Meetup or similar sites could replace that function. But my friends also use Facebook's events to organize parties and stuff - I don't know any good alternative that's nearly as convenient. I'm not convinced that deleting your account helps all that much anyways. You do make it harder for Facebook to listen in from your phone and things like that, but I'm sure they still keep a detailed profile on you. And you can get those benefits just by deleting the mobile app, without deleting your account. I think the better reason to delete Facebook is the mental health issues with the whole spotlight effect or whatever that's called (where you only see the highlights of other people's lives which makes you feel like your life is boring). As long as you regulate your usage in a healthy way, I think whether you delete your account or not doesn't make much of a difference. For now I just throw on a handful of privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, etc.) and accept that Facebook is going to know many things about me. As a point of reference - my age group started using Facebook around middle school. So I have a lot of "friends" that I would have no way of keeping up with otherwise, and I'm not used to not having that ability. I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. My parents, for example, have a couple old friends from whom they haven't heard anything in many many years. That concept doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I grew up with. It's not that there are many specific people I want to keep up with all the time - it's just nice to get random updates on random people you used to know well.

shock 7y ago
> While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while. Why do you choose not to call them and ask them how they are doing? I must admit, I do not really understand this "seeing how they are doing" statement, it confuses me as to why someone would spend time on facebook to see how another one is doing, but would not make the call to ask. Maybe I'm misreading it and the seeing part is the more relevant one. Edit: anyone care to clarify what was downvote worthy about this comment? did it not contribute to the discussion in some way? if the answer is yes, I don't know why it didn't contribute to the discussion.
- dymk 7y ago
  Facebook posts are lightweight, asynchronous forms of communication compared to phone+voicemail.
  - eska 7y ago
    They're also light on social interaction. Compare: - Sending a post about your holiday experience to Facebook, vs. - Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk about your holiday experience and how they've been lately. Sure, you won't be able to tell all your 1276 "friends" about your holidays, but the people you do talk to will actually be/become your friends. It's quantity vs quality. Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life, thinking they know me, never really interacting with me in any meaningful way.
    - dymk 7y ago
      > They're also light on social interaction. > Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk Do you see the irony here? The small-talk you're describing in a Facebook post is just as socially-anemic as the small-talk you'd have over the phone. If I want a deep conversation with somebody, I can message them on... FB messenger or something. Again, a form of communication easier to initiate than a phone call that they might not be able to pick up.
      - eska 7y ago
        I don't see the irony. How is it "socially-anemic"? It is in my opinion obviously much more social to talk to somebody on the phone than to post something on Facebook. Even 1-to-1 chat as you mention is much more social (but loses an insane amount of nuance and emotion), but still much less so than a phone call (but I also chat of course). Or do you consider everything that is not face-to-face "socially-anemic"? Are you saying that conversations via chat are deeper than on the phone? With a Facebook post one is essentially just dumping a complete story on the masses for them to consume. It's not personalized and people cannot interact by asking questions in between, or by adding their own stories ("Oh, I loved that part of the movie! Did you also think it has a deeper meaning to it?", essentially steering the conversation into another direction), or show you that they don't want to hear about something, for example.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
spurmboy 7y ago
You want to have a vague idea of other peoples lives, people who don’t matter to you in any real way, and you aren’t even getting the real status, just the image they want to project through the social media distortion lens. So you decide to sacrifice your privacy and mental health for it. Makes sense.
jedberg 7y ago
> I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined. And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days. Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc). I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook. Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.

shock 7y ago

> While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while. Why do you choose not to call them and ask them how they are doing? I must admit, I do not really understand this "seeing how they are doing" statement, it confuses me as to why someone would spend time on facebook to see how another one is doing, but would not make the call to ask. Maybe I'm misreading it and the seeing part is the more relevant one. Edit: anyone care to clarify what was downvote worthy about this comment? did it not contribute to the discussion in some way? if the answer is yes, I don't know why it didn't contribute to the discussion.

dymk 7y ago
Facebook posts are lightweight, asynchronous forms of communication compared to phone+voicemail.
- eska 7y ago
  They're also light on social interaction. Compare: - Sending a post about your holiday experience to Facebook, vs. - Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk about your holiday experience and how they've been lately. Sure, you won't be able to tell all your 1276 "friends" about your holidays, but the people you do talk to will actually be/become your friends. It's quantity vs quality. Personally I've decided that it's more important to me to have a few dozen really good friends in my life, instead of hundreds of people that passively take part in my life, thinking they know me, never really interacting with me in any meaningful way.
  - dymk 7y ago
    > They're also light on social interaction. > Calling a friend, engaging in small-talk Do you see the irony here? The small-talk you're describing in a Facebook post is just as socially-anemic as the small-talk you'd have over the phone. If I want a deep conversation with somebody, I can message them on... FB messenger or something. Again, a form of communication easier to initiate than a phone call that they might not be able to pick up.
    - eska 7y ago
      I don't see the irony. How is it "socially-anemic"? It is in my opinion obviously much more social to talk to somebody on the phone than to post something on Facebook. Even 1-to-1 chat as you mention is much more social (but loses an insane amount of nuance and emotion), but still much less so than a phone call (but I also chat of course). Or do you consider everything that is not face-to-face "socially-anemic"? Are you saying that conversations via chat are deeper than on the phone? With a Facebook post one is essentially just dumping a complete story on the masses for them to consume. It's not personalized and people cannot interact by asking questions in between, or by adding their own stories ("Oh, I loved that part of the movie! Did you also think it has a deeper meaning to it?", essentially steering the conversation into another direction), or show you that they don't want to hear about something, for example.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

spurmboy 7y ago

You want to have a vague idea of other peoples lives, people who don’t matter to you in any real way, and you aren’t even getting the real status, just the image they want to project through the social media distortion lens. So you decide to sacrifice your privacy and mental health for it. Makes sense.

jedberg 7y ago

> I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined. And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days. Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc). I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook. Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.