Deactivating Facebook
Posted: October 28, 2022
The other day I deactivated my Facebook account. In the last three or so years, I have very rarely been on FB except for advertising and business purposes, or when a group I was a part of was using it as their main medium. Any time I have used it, I have done so begrudgingly. I have been moving away from the platform for years. So the other day, I decided to take my experiment to the next level and deactivate my account.
The process itself was quite interesting. You are required to tell them why you are deactivating, not dissimilar from when you opt out of a newsletter. The ten or so choices they provide you with told me or confirmed just about everything I already know about the platform. One of the options was to temporarily deactivate with a choice to automatically reactivate in a set time period, except they only let you choose between 1 and 7 days instead of say a month or six months. I ended up choosing the option that said something to the effect of, “I don’t find value in Facebook.” When I clicked on this, a pop up surfaced like a passive aggressive helicopter parent telling me that if I used FB in the following ways I might get more value out of it. Then it asked me again if I was sure I wanted to deactivate. Yes, absolutely. If I didn’t want to before (which I did), I sure want to now.
Which brings me to the point. I don’t find value in the platform. I am not sure I ever did. I joined in 2007, and mostly not of my own volition. I was on a three month backpacking venture and found myself in a hostel in Athens, Greece at the bottom of the hill of the Parthenon, (their roof deck? Chef’s kiss beautiful, day or night.) A guy I met there and had been out with a few times urged me to set one up (and also sat with me as I walked through the setup on the computer in the hostel lobby), so we could keep in touch at the next destination we both happened to be traveling to. At the time FB was the best option. We didn’t have smart phones, or international cell phones, or even local cell phones or really many other messaging options. It was the best way for us to keep in touch. And to FBs credit, it really did help me keep in touch with all my travel friends all over the world from that point on, but I still never really got into it. It was a utility at best, and a distraction at worst.
As a photography lover, I have always loved to share pictures with people who are interested. It’s why I was an early Flickr adopter. But something happened in the last decade or so with me and FB, I started pulling my pictures off their platform. I got more stringent about my privacy settings. I started deleting a lot, I didn’t let myself be tagged in anything. I lost interest. I completely stopped posting except for when it was business related. In fact business is one of the main reasons I have stayed on the platform so long. You can’t have a business page unless you have a personal account.
Lately though, I have been in an exploratory relationship with living my values with more alignment. Part of this is age, part of this is psyche work, some of it is pandemic shuffling, part of it is a desire to live and design my life in a way that works for my personal human system. As a part of this process, I’ve become really aware of what I am calling “unattended energy threads.” These are things that are complete for me but hanging out there in the ethers. I just haven’t tied up or completed the loop. It’s the places that I don’t want to spend my time and energy, but are still open in some respect. It’s the things that are in the back of your mind and so far down your priority list that they have fallen off that list in the desert of “Is this still a thing?”
So, I decided to clean this one up by deactivating it. Knowing I am not going to spend any time on it in my mind or in monthly business workings is quite honestly, a relief. I can’t tell you how much passive mental energy I have spent on this platform, either feeling like I am doing the wrong thing for business by not posting more or the awareness of passive relationships on the platform or simply all the unexpected “shoulds” with it that pop up, that don’t even seem to belong to me. And I’ve been using a newsfeed blocker for years, so it’s not even like I was seeing anyone’s posts anyways. But it’s there in the culture, it has seeped in.
I also came to the realization that just because I am deactivating this one platform does not mean I am not reachable online. When I really sat down to think about it, that was one of the biggest concerns for me as someone working in the online space. How are people going to find me? How will they connect with me? As I went into this limiting belief (because that is what it is) more deeply, I realized I am extremely available online, and I spent so little time on FB anyways that it wasn’t going to make a difference for me. Not only do I have this website with my name on it, I also have many emails, a newsletter, run two blogs, still have accounts on Instagram (though I barely use those for similar reasons and I am not sure how long those will last), am on Insight Timer, a podcast …oh and did I mention some fun things HERE, I mean I am out there. There are so many ways to get in touch with me…maybe too many. How many do we really need?
Once I got clear on this, the decision was easy. It simply wasn’t adding value to my life, full stop. It’s not where I wanted to put my time and attention, even if it was passively. It also became clear that this is the next step in my conscious technology relationship journey that I started in 2015.
Now this doesn’t mean that this needs to be the case for everyone, nor am I telling people to deactivate, my message is the same as it has been for a while - notice, become aware, investigate, run an experiment, choose what is right for you.
As with any experiment and self-study, any of the above may change as I continue to go through this process. Maybe one day I will re-activate, or maybe I will delete it altogether. I really can’t know. All that I can say is, this feels right for me right now, and that is enough.
Author’s Note:
If you are looking for my yoga business page or my ihavethewanders page on FB, they are no longer there because of this deactivation. FB does not allow you to run and host pages if you don’t have a personal account.
Besides sitting with myself and doing my inner exploration, I’ve recently read a few pieces that confirmed what I already felt and helped me get even clearer. They are –
Quiet Marketing by Danielle Gardener (This was free on Kindle Unlimited when I read it and I think it still is. It is also short, just about 50 pages).