I Deactivated my Facebook Profile

It was a difficult decision, although I’m not entirely sure why. No—that’s not true. I completely know why I deactivated it. In short, it was not net positive.

I’m not going to preach about how social media is a plague upon us. I can think of nothing more ironic—or hypocritical—than taking to social media to rant about the evils of social media. Which, incidentally, I’ve wanted to do almost daily for the past few years.

How did I even get here? I was perfectly content with my flip phone and a MySpace page (loved the adding songs to your profile bit) until Facebook came along. I resisted until 2008, then succumbed to peer pressure. “You have to have a Facebook page! Everyone’s on Facebook!” So I did. And it wasn’t too bad at first. I reconnected with people I hadn’t seen in years. I could communicate with relatives and friends from all over. We shared moments and events in real time.

Then, slowly but surely, my feed stopped being a stream of updates from friends and became a battleground of half-truths, outrage, catfish, and scams. Conspiracy theories were everywhere. I started getting panicked messages about how 5G was going to destroy the world, martial law was imminent, and we were all doomed. That’s when I realized: the chain letters and tin foil hats had moved into the interwebs.

I fought it. I rationalized it. I even increased my usage—though to be fair, that was because my job demanded it. I was responsible for keeping social media current and active. Little by little, my usage shifted from personal to professional.

So why did I wait until now, five years later, to pull the plug?

I found myself scrolling mindlessly, jumping at clickbait, skimming through post after repost. Getting pulled in by brief little teasers only to find it was a copy-and-paste reshare: “If you believe only my real friends will read this…” Crap. Yes. Crap. Since when did—deep breath. I digress. Moving on.

Eventually it hit me: no amount of blocking, unfriending, tweaking settings, or unfollowing was going to protect me from the growing desire to unleash a tirade on the unsuspecting masses. I even engaged in a couple of random conversations with people I had never—and would never—meet. Though I will say, I managed to maintain a level of respect and dialogue that was nothing short of heroic.

It’s a slippery slope, friends. The Book of Faces.

I considered deleting the account altogether, but I’m not ready to jump without a parachute. I have pictures on there that I neither have the time nor patience to move. Sometimes I wish I could go analog completely and remove all traces of me from the digital world.

So I started an online blog.