(added: since writing the post below, I’ve reduced the number of Twitter accounts I follow by around 70–about 14%–and muted several more.)
Tomorrow will mark a year since I deactivated my Facebook account.
I haven’t been away completely–I logged in a couple of times for family events and photographs, but on the few times I’ve gone back in recently, I’ve only stayed around 10 minutes max.
The process of deactivating is an interesting exercise in emotional blackmail, culminating in the display of several FB “friends” who’ll miss me if I go, which only goes to demonstrate the limited intelligence of algorithms. Optionally, you can also advise FB of the reasons why you’re deactivating the account. Sometimes I used quotes from Twin Peaks (This is the water, this is the well; drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and the darkness within). Most recently I went with the Grateful Dead (Dark Star crashes, pouring light into ashes. Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis. Starlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion…).
Anyway, I have no desire to reactivate the account, except for those family occasions when it has its uses.
My main social media interaction is on Twitter, which I also try and limit. I think I’ll try and limit it even more. This morning, scrolling through the feed, I found myself experiencing the same build up of tension and irritation that led me to drop off Facebook.
The nature of the way Twitter is changing, letting me see everything that people I follow like or respond to, means that my timeline, which I tried to develop to be fun and informative, is increasingly full of toxicity, and I don’t see any need to subject myself to that. Another thinning of the numbers of people I follow is long overdue, but I don’t think that will solve matters in the long run: the medium is being gamed by poisonous people and I don’t need that in my life.
In the meantime, here’s Zeynep Tufekci to cheer you up.
I haven’t looked at my mobile phone today. It’s by my bedside, where it was when I woke up. It hasn’t been in my pocket or been carried around from room to room as I’ve walked round the house. I didn’t take it with me when I went out to the shops this morning, and it wasn’t on the windowsill while I power washed the deck this afternoon.
I was a late adopter of mobiles, and I think I only got one in the first place through work. I quickly got into the habit of having a work phone and a personal phone and keeping them separate. From late-adopting scepticism, I’ve got into the same habit of always-on connectivity as the rest of the world.
As I’ve written here before, I’ve restricted my social media activities quite considerably. I cancelled my LinkedIn account in May 2016, and effectively closed my Facebook account last November, though friends can still get me on Messenger, and I have resurfaced a couple of times when the occasion required it. I still have a Twitter account that I look at for half an hour at a time four or five times a day, and reckon that is probably too much. And I have an Instagram account that I do use but is, by its nature, a more sporadic thing.
My scepticism is not new–I’ve written about it several times including the post below from August 2011
So I was ready to encounter this in the Guardian and to follow up by reading Tristan Harris. You don’t have to buy in to all of the ideas there to nevertheless consider your own approach to connectivity. Still, much of what Harris and his peers say at least echo my reasons for dropping off Facebook, which I wrote about here:
So I made a deliberate decision to disconnect myself today (except, ironically enough, by writing this blog post.) This isn’t permanent, and I don’t expect a medal for it; I’m not a Luddite and I’m not rejecting the benefits of connectivity. As our landline is these days only an attractor for spam calls, my personal mobile is where I get calls from people whom I actually want to talk to and so it won’t go away.
But leaving the phone by the bed while I go about my day fits with the reason I rarely wear a watch: I don’t want to measure my existence or awareness by reference to technology or the promptings of technology. I want to find a different frame of reference for experiencing life that is more rooted in the inner than by external signifiers.
I know that sounds like hippy-shit, but there we are.
I went back on FaceBook last week; as I said there, it was purely for self-promotion because of Respectable Horror.
It’s been interesting to dip my toes back in, and advertising the book there certainly drew a response. However the main reason I left, the pollution of my newsfeed by increasingly toxic and/or moronic political stuff, has not abated one whit; in fact it seems worse, although it may be that by being away I’m more sensitised to it on my return.
So I’ll be turning it off again soon.
I’m keeping away from Twitter at present too. I like the immediacy of Twitter, and its liveliness, but it is also a cesspool of horribleness to rival even the awfulness of BTL comments in Newspapers (and YouTube). The idiotic stirring of the pot on Scottish Independence has ramped up the stupids even more, so I’m restricting the time I spent there to dipping in every so often to get a flavour, then going and doing something more wholesome instead.
I ought to be writing, of course, and I need to refocus on that.
I’m now well into my third month without Facebook, and I have no inclination to go back. My account remains deactivated rather than deleted because I still have uses for Messenger, but the main site has no attraction.
I have noticed a lot of links in Tweets to people’s FB postings; sometimes I can see them sometimes I can’t. C’est la vie; posts are ephemeral, life is too short.
Incidentally, for anyone who has done those Facebook personality type tests, this is worth a read, and the 10-minute talk below is worth a watch. Of course, there is no doubt a huge marketing reason for the company to play up their influence and gain more customers, but still worth a look.
I deactivated my Facebook account on 18 November. I went back on briefly on Friday/Saturday just gone to let people know that I’ve gone, then deactivated the account again.
Effectively that’s 16 days without it; I haven’t found its absence a particular wrench and I don’t feel any inclination to dive back into it. The brief time I was back on did not incline me to change my mind.
So this year I’ve deactivated Facebook and completely deleted my LinkedIn account. The latter led to an immediate and drastic reduction in spam mail with no balancing downside. I’m still active-ish on Twitter, but dip into it rather than have it permanently on. I had an email discussion with a friend in the US, who has also cut her Facebook use back to the bone for much the same reasons I’ve walked away. I wrote (slightly edited):
I remember when the big thing was Usenet and email Listservers; then along came pioneers like Friends Reunited and My Space, then online forums and Google-Groups, then Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Now there’s a whole eco-system of new sites and apps. I don’t use, but millions of others do. As each new wave comes along, the old ones die off, and I wonder what the future is for Facebook. It has the momentum of its huge user-base of course, but I’m not convinced by its chances of longevity, and wonder if it will go the way of MySpace.
It also occurred to me that I have a number of friends who have never used Facebook at all and for whom this is all completely by-the-by.
I’ve been on Facebook for a while, I think since around 2009. I am now in my second week without it. My account hasn’t been deleted, but I have disabled it so I don’t show up there if anyone looks for me. Click on the Facebook link to the right and you’ll get a ‘Page Not Found’ message.
The reason I did it was simple: I opened my account up over breakfast one morning, scrolled back through a few entries, and decided I didn’t want to see any more of what was there. I’ve always said I liked Facebook because I could keep in touch with friends and relatives and post photographs, etc., but the scrolling list of memes and stupidity that morning repelled me, especially the political stuff from either side of the Atlantic.
Signal:Noise was unacceptable.
I’m not going to make any grand claims about how not being on Facebook has made me happier–it’s only been a few days so far after all, but the absence of it as a distraction is a very pleasurable experience. I’ve done more with my time, even if that ‘doing more’ has largely been reading and thinking about writing (and seeking publication). I’ve also started thinking about 2017 and what it may bring, and in doing so have been playing guitar more and cleaning up my old SLR cameras, readying them for use.
I don’t know whether I’ll eventually just delete the Facebook account or leave it in permanent suspension; it still has some uses, I think, so it will stay for a while. I am sure, though, that I want to reclaim my life, and especially want to reclaim my creative life. The creeping ubiquity of Facebook, or at least the way I used it, interferes with that and so, for now, it has gone.
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