My Breakup with Facebook

A few years ago, when I was a broadcast journalism student in college, I remember hearing about this new site called Facebook that allowed university students to connect and network. A few months later my university was added to the list and I signed up.

After signing up I started adding all my friends and acquaintances at school thinking it might be a good way to stay connected with people for class projects etc. After only a couple weeks I found that I didn’t actually use it much. I would jump on every once in awhile to see what people were doing, but I found that for the most part, any “connecting” I needed to do I did by email or phone. I was already connected to the people I really needed to be in touch with.

Over the next couple of years, I added more “friends” – people from high school, 2nd and 3rd cousins and so on. (The funny thing was that I hadn’t spoken to most of these people in years and to be honest I still haven’t physically spoken to many of them). Facebook continued to grow and add new features and before I knew it, everyone was using it.

Too say that “everyone” is on Facebook is obviously not true, but I was reading an article in the Financial Times not long ago that stated that Facebook had actually overtaken Google’s popularity among US internet users.

Now, after a couple of years and a fluctuating number of friends, (depending on whether I was in a purging mood or an adding mood) the site itself is only a slight reflection of what it was a couple of years ago, but I find that my attitude towards it has changed very little. Sure it can be fun to see what people are doing and get up-to-the-minute detail on what they had for breakfast, but that stuff doesn’t really matter. Don’t get me wrong, there are several people and organizations that have found a great use for Facebook and they have been able to do it without just adding to the noise, but they are in a small minority. If you really think someone wants to know what you’re listening to right now… you’re wrong.

So, after playing with the idea for some time, I decided to put my account on pause. I figured the amount of time I spent on Facebook actually doing something worthwhile paled in comparison to the amount of time I spent wading through noise… my own and others.

It’s been almost a month now, and what started out as an experiment to see if I could really cut the cord, has turned into a nice break. Whether I reactivate my account in the future or not remains to be seen, but in the mean time, thanks for the good times Facebook, it’s me not you.