I know, this shouldn’t be a big deal. It shouldn’t, because it is just another social platform. It is, because the first statement is not entirely true.
First of all, there is no other social network with such a gigantic user base. So deleting it basically means losing touch with those holiday acquaintances and old friends from school. It is a place where you can reach out to different people with different views and backgrounds.
What makes it easier to swallow, is the realization that this belief is bullshit. The only friends that will click your politically engaged links, are the ones who already share your views - others will most likely unfollow you after your third attempt. And seeing somebody's face once in a while does not mean you are in touch. And if you don't have somebody's phone number, e-mail or address, were you really that close?
But realizing that the value that facebook brings you is not what it promises, still does not make it easy. Over the years, I got addicted to letting people know what I am doing and having this feedback loop, someone liking my photo feels good, this is how this platform gets you hooked.
In the end I decided I can do it, and if I can’t, I can always come back.
So I did it, I deleted facebook and instagram. And how does it feel? At the beginning it felt strange - you open your browser as always, and you have no website you actually want to open (which made me use twitter as substitute in the first few days and convinced me even more that I truely am addicted). After a while, I turned to smarter websites (news, blogs...) and in the end reduced my internet consumption significantly.
The surprising upside is that now I am genuinely more interested in what people actually tell me. When you use facebook, you have this false impression that you stay in touch with people just because you see their faces and like their photos. So when you actually meet a friend who recently travelled to Himalaya (already having seen tons of pictures and location check-ins) you don’t really want to hear them talking about it. You become detatched during the conversation. The opposite is true is when you allow yourself to fall out of touch a bit. You become interested in people's lives because on daily basis you know nothing about them! So paradoxically, I became more social without the social network. When people don’t have a feeling they know everything about you, they might become more curious.
For me my decision to leave facebook was driven mostly by losing trust in the company, but as I did it, I saw more and more red flags about social media with regard to privacy and productivity - especially due to the constant presence of those platforms on my phone.
I am not saying that we should quit our online lives altogether, but staying conscious about what we do, when and why, is an important step that we all need to take.
And in the end, you might find out that offline life is not that bad as well.
