In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I've detailed some of the reasons WHY I'm leaving Facebook and why you should consider making that move too.
In this article, i'm going to talk about HOW to go about doing that while keeping your friends.
The hardest part of leaving Facebook is not to delete your account...it's to not come back! Once you’re signed up, it’s hard to break up for good because now you’ve got private messages, event invitations, endless new baby photos, and life-changing announcements from your closest friends.
Truly, Facebook has a way of being sticky and hard to live without. This is why I decided to share with you this step by step guide to leaving Facebook without deleting your online social life.
One of the reason why we are dependent on Facebook is that it is our contact manager. All our friends, family and acquaintances are on there and without it, we wouldn't have a way to reach out.
This is why you have to consider building your own contact manager so that no matter what happens, you have a way to reach out to those you need to reach out to. Phone numbers and email are a good start but nothing can stop you from including birthday's and physical addresses.
The truth is that not everybody on your Facebook is your friend. There is a limit to own many relationships you can maintain...what people call the Dunbar Number
Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar".
As you go through your contact list in your messenger, you'll find this to be true. Most of those people are not even acquaintances...there are people that you have no ties whatsoever with anymore.
Find those people that you want to cultivate a in relationship with, ask them for their phone number and email and compile this into a excel sheet for now. That way, no matter what happens, you have that information at end. You may consider printing it and file it in case something happens.
This process may help you realize how you need to reconnect with some of the people that you haven't connected with in a long time. Why not make the most of it and set up dates to reconnect with them?
The next step is to transfer all that precious data into your phone, you can do this by converting your excel file to vcf format here: https://thewebvendor.com/excel-to-vcf-vcard-online-converter.html
Finally, by setting up whatsapp on your desktop (as see in the video below), you can transfer that file easily from your desktop to your phone in seconds.
I know that this is little tedious. It's way easier to stay on Facebook and bury our head in the sand...but believe me. There is a feeling of empowerment to know that you don't depend on Facebook to reach the people you care about.
By following this process, you end up OWNING all your precious contacts, having better messaging features and have an easier time at getting out of Facebook jail.
We are not done, there are other things we can do to make sure that you can dump Facebook while keeping your friends
