Thoughts about Abandoning Facebook

After 20 years, I'm thinking about kicking Mark Zuckerberg to the curb. 

I was an early adopter of Facebook. My first post was in 2005, when working as a recruiter for a graduate school. Facebook in the early days was a collegiate program. It was designed as a way for college students to connect, so you had to have a .edu email to sign up. 

As a recruiter with a .edu email, I was able to connect with the undergraduates that I was trying to reach. 

Not that anyone cares, but here are a few reasons I’ve considering taking a break from that 20-year relationship with das Buch. 

• Facebook has become an advertising venture. There are so many ads, and they are so intrusive, it takes a mental energy to sort through them. And that’s what Facebook wants: all that mental energy is actually a form of engagement. 
• I want to stay connected with old and new friends, not strangers. In the past few weeks, I received 40 requests for “friendship” on Facebook. None of them had I ever met. Some were friends of friends, so a legitimate, potential connection.
• Bots, bots, and more bots. Of the 40 friend requests mentioned above, many had zero connection to me, and the profile photos looked AI generated. This is just the beginning of how AI will cloud our ability to distinguish between fact and fiction. (Full disclosure: my FB profile pic has an AI-generated background.)
• FOMO is a real issue. Many of my Facebook friends have drastically more exciting lives than I. Love that for them. And I love seeing them grow, succeed, and enjoy life. But Facebook succeeds by forcing engaging posts to the fore, which overwhelms me. “Glad you are eating at five-star restaurants throughout Asia on your global tour, but I’m here eating oatmeal.” My petty jealousy kicks into overdrive, so I choose to curb the information overload. 

But I’m not deleting Facebook completely

Despite it's programmed information overload, there are a few reasons to hang on to the demon app.

• Facebook Marketplace is horrible. But it is the best way to buy/sell locally since Craigslist. (Actually, I just found a house on Craigslist, so maybe it’s not as bad as I remember.) And now that Jeff Bezos has paid for his wedding, I don't need to shop Amazon anymore. Keeping it local is a win for the FB.
• History. There are lots of my historical moments chronicled on Facebook—good memories and less-than-good. In general I don’t believe in destroying historical information. Today’s trash is tomorrow’s historical documents, after all. 
• The app is not the only option. By accessing through the web interface, I have less access to the platform, so a form of self-control.