I am coming up on the first anniversary of having deleted my Facebook, Instagram, and What’s App accounts. I had two motivations for getting off most forms of social media.
The first was a sense that I had had for many years, that social media was contributing to the fraying of our social fabric. This really hit home for me when I had to hide the posts of someone I considered a good friend because I found them undermining our friendship. In person, he was warm and loving, and though we didn’t agree on everything political or economic, we could have meaningful conversations about our disagreements. We laughed easily together. But when I viewed his posts, I felt I was seeing a different person. That person seemed angry, hostile and intolerant. I found it hard to view his posts without my feelings for him as a friend changing. This was my first-hand experience of how social media influences our perceptions of people and how it narrows and re-enforces one’s natural sense of tribe. A sense of tribe can be a positive and grounding thing but social media helps push tribalism to the extremes where it moves toward nationalism, even fascism.
I also decided that I didn’t want to be any part of Facebook’s revenue model which involves selling your personal information to generate ad dollars. If you use Facebook and its related products, Instagram and What’s App, they make money on your attention and what they know about you, which is a lot. Their machine learning shows you whatever it is that will keep you on their sites and keep you coming back. Often that is the material that makes you angry or upset. And yes, there are the cute kitten videos that make you smile too.
The second motivation was simply wanting to eliminate a habit, doom scrolling social media and news, that I felt was a waste of the dwindling precious hours that remain to my life on this planet. “I am glad I spent an hour scrolling Facebook,” said no one ever. I had tried various techniques to limit my time but they were too easy to override. I realized that deleting my accounts was the only way to enforce the discipline I wished I had.
Now, a year later, I have no real regrets. I did lose access to contact with quite a few people. I say ‘access to contact’ because even though I had more than 500 ‘friends’ on Facebook, most of these were people I hadn’t been in touch with in years. More than half were students from my many Birthright trips with whom I had spent 10 intense days with one summer and then never saw again. A small group were work associates, and beyond that a small group of real ‘friends’ whom I knew how to keep in touch with if I and they were motivated to do so.
So while staying with my daughter out in Colorado last December, I posted a message saying that I was leaving Facebook in a week. I invited those who wished to be added to my mailing list to send me their email addresses. I heard from some but many others, I am sure, never even saw my message because Facebook’s algorithm determined (probably correctly) that they couldn’t have cared less about my leaving or about keeping in touch.
Shortly, after this, I started writing my weekly blog post as a way of staying in touch with those who said that they wanted to or claimed to enjoy my writing. If you are reading this, you are likely one of those people.
My audience is tiny. There are about 150 people on my list now and it grows by just a few every month. Only people who ask get added.
I do still have a Twitter account. I have always found Twitter so boring that I was never tempted to spend any time on the site at all. I am in good company here. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, just announced his departure to spend more time not with his family but with his other company. And though I believe that Twitter also is not great for our culture (see antics of former Tweeter-in-Chief), I keep thinking it may come in handy for something. I do post links to my blog posts when I remember but since I have like five followers, I don’t think it is driving any activity on my website. And as with Facebook, I see sides of my acquaintances that are troubling. Like the friend whose sole use of their account seems to be to distribute vaccine conspiracy theories. So, I just don’t use it unless I remember to post a link.
A year later the full depth of the depravity of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is just beginning to come to light. I don’t need to go into it here, it is easy to find, just Google* Duck, Duck Go it.
There are a few things I miss. My daughter has an Instagram feed in which she shows her beautiful glass sculptures. I don’t see those unless I remember to ask my wife to show them to me. Sometimes too, I think, I should get in touch with so and so. I can always track them down but it takes a little more effort. Finally, I have a few friends in Israel for whom What’s App was the preferred message platform. I hear from them less often. But again, if I (and they) were motivated we would reach out.
Since, I got off social media, I made a few other changes. I removed the news apps from my phone. I can still view news on my computer, but other than scanning the financial news once a day or so, I mostly don’t look. I also stopped listening to all the news programs on NPR and now just listen to music streaming on WRUR Rochester and WXPN Philadelphia. Somehow, I still learn about the important stuff that happens.
I stopped watching the Youtube clips from Late Night TV as well. I don’t think their incessant sneering and contempt for the right end of the political spectrum adds much of value to the national conversation, as entertaining as it may be. On YouTube I try to restrict my viewing to vloggers who review technology (mostly Apple) and cooking channels.
People who are geographically far away feel farther away. (That may also be a side effect of Covid, when one feels more hesitant about getting on a plane.) The people who are within driving distance more important. I have less FOMO about your life since for the most part, I have no idea what you are doing. What is happening here in my little town seems more important than it used to. The world has grown a bit larger. Maybe that isn’t a bad thing.
*I try to avoid all Google products as well because even though they don’t seem to be quite as amoral as Facebook, their revenue model is the same. You are not the customer; you are the product.