Feels Good to Quit Facebook

I was on Facebook for about two years (yes, late on the social hype bandwagon) and today I finally did it. I deactivated my FB page today and I feel pretty good about it.

I was new to FB in 2013 and I had high hopes for corresponding with my nieces, nephews and relatives overseas, but that never really happened. At first, I was gung ho and posted some of my thoughts, nothing controversial. Things were going okay since it was new to me, but then as the months went on, things changed.

I ended up friending people I never should have. I had a stalker friend that always posted to any of my posts (see below). My nieces or nephews hardly ever posted. I was dismayed by what some of my relatives or friends posted and I thought "wow, I don't think I really like you much anymore".

Basically, I want my privacy back because I'm more of an introvert. I had enough of FB and feeling not that good every time I went on. I tended to compare my life to others. I know that’s stupid because it’s only natural that people to want to brag about how perfect and charmed their lives are on FB.

Certain holidays would come around and I felt this strange obligation to post something or like someone else’s post. I got tired of seeing kid pictures, look at my trip pictures, or constant selfies. Then there were stupid serial posters of nonsensical stuff.

I got to the point where I didn’t want to “Like” anything anymore because that post would be thrown into my News Feed. I noticed that friends of friends posts showed up in my News Feed so that meant that my posts would show up in people's feeds that weren't even my friends unless I was careful to specify where my posts go.

At first I had reservations with deactivating my FB account. Then I did it and I felt immediately better. Good riddance FB.

I wasn't on but a year or so and deleted my account back a few years ago. Ahh, such a freeing feeling! I got tired of the nonsense, stupid posts and the newsfeed garbage...loving the life of an introvert. Good for you!

I could relate to so many things that you said, especially the above. It can be shocking sometimes to find out what our relatives' and friends' political views really are.

You might ask your nieces and nephews if there's another social media platform that they use (not sure how old they are) like Instagram or Twitter that they wouldn't mind you following them on, if you decide to take another try at using social media.

Good on ya, maybejane!

I deleted mine back in 2009 because I never used it and had only one "friend" in it, but a couple of years later I've got a "welcome back" e-mail from FB, and a message saying that my e-mail had been successfuly changed.

I thought: "Welcome back? Hang on, I deleted that thing!".

Turns out someone with the same name as me (or probably someone trying to hack into my old account) was trying to reactivate that account for use.

I then immediately contacted FB and they in turn rolled it all back to my e-mail address and gave me back control of my now re-activated account.

And to this day, I still get FB e-mails sometimes saying "sorry you are having trouble logging in" when I don't even log in anymore, which means some identity thief out there is still trying...

I now just keep it activated for the sake of avoiding another account hijack attempt.

But do I use it? Never. And for the same reasons you already mentioned.

I have facebook again after deleting my profiles twice, I was an early adapter. Noe I unfollow everbody that adds me or whom I add so my newsfeed is always empty ( standard setting is on, no choice so it requirs some effort but its worth it). If i want to see my friends activity I visit their page every now and then. Furthermore I created a group "good friends" and only those can see my photos ore posts, by default. The rest of the privacy settings are as strict as possible and I never use the phone authorization which Facebook or other services ask for on a regular basis.

I deactivated, too, and I feel SO much better! (Although I just realized that when I deactivated in haste, I left an important message unread. Oops.)

There have actually been studies done that show that Facebook can cause people to feel worse about themselves.

When I was active on FB, I unsubscribed to almost everyone. I don't care about the things that people post. And TBH, most of the people I have as "friends" on FB weren't even current friends! They were all past classmates and co-workers and such.

I am sad that I ended up cutting off the only contact I had with one of my online friends. I met him on another site that I am no longer a member of, so we switched over to FB as a way to keep in touch. (He's not an email kind of person, and I understand....he's got PTSD like I do, and I actually went for a year without checking any of my email accounts once.)

I did fall for the whole "reconnect with your past" thing....well, more than once. It never ended well. I realized that most of those people belong exactly where they are....in my past. And TBH, I've changed SOOO much in the past few years, I'm not even the same person that those people knew.

Hi All ,
Ditto to much of what was said. The above sentence just about says it all for me.

Now I should disclose I'm " old school " , I remember what it was like to write a letter or
make an actual phone call. I also knew who my REAL friends were and weren't.

So I resisted FB for a long time. Then one day , I had heard so much about this FB thing that I decided to check it out. First ,after giving out all this personal information which I usually don't like to do , and going thru all this BS I finally was on FB !

I immediately had 200 " friends ". I'm like wow , I have all these friends and didn't even know it , ( in REALITY I had maybe 1 actual person I might have called a friend.)
So I wasted hours trying to find out who all these people were.
Needless to say it didn't take me long to figure out it was really all BS.
I don't need to list all the reasons as most have already been said.

Fast Forward : Now I tried to get rid of them , ( FB and all the phonies ) , and I just couldn't ! They make it so hard that I was really starting to get annoyed ,to put it mildly.
Took months but I think the account is finally closed. Actually I know it's never really closed. I know all my info is stored somewhere in a " cloud ". And they still bother me from time to time.
Research is starting to show that FB and the like is actually hurting society rather than helping it. All it's doing is making certain people rich , and knowing everything about everybody.

God help us all.

I haven't bothered to deactivate but I haven't been on in over two years-- and I don't miss it a bit. I agree with continuously blue-- facebook (and IMO all social media) is hurting society rather than helping it.

I had the same problem with FB.

I had a stalker friend who would comment on every single post or picture I put up. Not only that, but she'd start asking all kinds of nosy questions. She also would go through my friend list and friend people she'd met through me, but who she barely knew at all, and she would do the same thing on their FB page - clicking like on all their posts and pictures, commenting on everything, etc. I am sure some of these people have unfriended her by now.
I did not unfriend her, but I did create a separate friend list of people I post stuff to now, and she's not on it. So she doesn't see most of the things I put up on FB anymore. I just feel like she needs to get a life.

I also, felt obligated to like pictures all the time and although I don't mind doing that, I had one relative get mad when she claimed that I hadn't "liked" pictures of her new grandchild. Which I had, she just apparently didn't see my name on there. I have young children myself and I can honestly say I don't really care if anyone clicks like on their photos or not. I don't hold it against people if they don't. This just all seems strange to me. I haven't quit FB yet but maybe I will some day, who knows.

There are also the people who want to push their religion and politics down everyone else's throat!

Lol this whole like behavior... Some ppl even confuse facebook with a real life. If u didnt like their photo comment or whatever ******** then they think irl you dont like them.
I might one day disable it but for now im a modest user. I like photography and I use it as an exhibition tool. Its always nice when people comment and like my photos (generally speaking, not the like button) but if not I dont care.

Agreed! I don't know how old the neices and nephews are but my boyfriend's 15 year old son NEVER uses facebook. He uses instagram frequently. Probably Vine too but I don't really care to do and watch short videos.

I guess I'm kind of odd, I actually like facebook. I should clarify though, I have two facebook accounts. I have a professional account where I will accept a friend request from anyone that's not a current/former client. All my family members are friends with that account, any colleagues, co-workers, people I know from grad school who I never had a single in-person conversation with...I check it about once a week and post really benign stuff. Nothing political, and I also hide all of the racist/sexist/homophobic/overtly religious stuff that I prefer not to see. Here in the deep south there's a lot of racism right next to Jesus stuff.

The facebook profile I actually use I have a no family policy. I only have people on there that I actually know and actually like. Friends of friends that always annoyed me at group dinners? Nope, ignored. So I've managed to curate a really fun place to go to see inspirational photos, quotes I like, photos of people I give a crap about, and political posts that don't offend me. I really like it! I'm just mad because they forced me to change my fake name so now I have taken most identifying information and photos private so there's no drama from people who didn't make the cut. There are several friends from high school who moved away that I would definitely have lost touch with if it were not for facebook.

I still am on FB, but while still staying friends with a number of folks, I've decided to hide their posts. Too much complaining from some (about some mighty trivial things) and from others, this airbrushed version of their life. While I'm glad for them, I know their life is not the "most wonderful prefect everything in the world." I'd rather be here where people are so much more honest.

I have thought about deactivating FB many times and even did a few times. However, deactivating it causes me to not be able to use applications from FB, like Spotify music which I love. My entire family used to ignore my posts and so I unfriended them all and now I have an open account where anyone can post on my page. My brother likes and comments on some stuff I post now. I think he knows I unfriended him because of being ignored. So now he is one of my followers. It really hurt to see him post to all of his family and non family and not me. But it is okay now that he is following me. I try not to take FB as seriously as I used to. I mainly use it to sign petitions and share petitions of abused animals who need help. I also share dogs that need homes. I'm happy with what I do now on there.

Facebook started as a college thing....I missed joining by one year because I'd graduated from school the previous year, so I didn't get into it at the beginning. A friend convinced me to join years later so we could keep in touch after our summer internship ended. Oh, but back to my point....once they opened up Facebook to everyone.....well, everyone was joining! What teenager wants to be on social media where mom or dad is going to likely want to A) be a friend or B) have access to the account in some form? NONE! Yeah, I think many younger people have moved on to other sorts of social media platforms and apps. I know if I was a teenager, I'd be avoiding Facebook like the plague.....but then again, 20 years ago when I was a teenager, we had a lot more freedom in general and it was nice being able to do things without your parents knowing, go places without your parents knowing. Kids nowadays don't have that luxury. (Its kinda sad...)

My nieces and nephews are between 13-18. My brother told me that his 18 year son uses a gaming message board. My brother educated his kids to be very weary and careful of Facebook and other social sites due to privacy issues. He told them that if they start posting details of their lives, it will always be in the cloud and it can/will come back to bite them. That is so true. For instance, it's easy for me to do a screenshot of any picture with comments on FB and have it forever. I can then post it anywhere on the web; not that I would do that, my moral code wouldn't allow it lol.

Anyway, my nieces and nephews have FB accounts under pseudo names and they rarely post. They are able to have pseudo names because my brother has set up an elaborate home server.

It's funny, I originally signed up for FB to see what my nieces and nephews were up to since they live across the country. Well, they never posted or liked anything I posted. They stayed away from FB.

I really don't think kids want to have friended their parents or older relatives. In the past few years, FB has become inundated by middle aged people so that shift happened. On my FB News Feed, the middle aged tended to post things like inspirational sayings I've seen thousands of times, recipes, here's my pet again, I love my daughter and if you do, please share, here's my lovely kids AGAIN, etc. If that's someone's cup of tea, great, but that's not for me.

But then there are anomalies as to why certain kids are still on FB or maybe the kid is a momma's kid (not being harsh). If I was 16 again, I surely wouldn't want my parents or relatives to be on my Facebook page. I would have to curtail what post, so what's the point.

On the other hand, what is really odd is my brother-in-law's stepson (15 years old) who is really out there in no man's land. He's now living with his dad who lets him do anything. He posts continuous selfies and in September played out a family drama on FB where he knocked his mom. It was so sad and it made me feel awful to see this. I ended up removing him from my News Feed. He has a self-esteem issue and it's too bad his dad doesn't guide him. But that's the way the world is. Bad role models are a dime a dozen and that's sad, but a fact of life.

I joined when it first started a long time ago and I remember convincing my friends to all join too and they were reluctant at first but then everyone seemed to have a Facebook account!

I slowly got sucked in and got quite obsessed with just scrolling through endless feeds and 'stalking' people and being so deep that I'd start on someone's page that I had a crush on and ended up on their girfriends best friends brothers friends dads page!

The nail in the coffin for me to quit was when me and some friends started to become distant and I'd see pictures of them all out together and I was never invited etc.

Social media is hurtful lol

And also I'd scroll for probably hours looking at faces of people I hadn't seen for years and looking at their children that I'd never even met!

i just deactivated my account a few days ago, actually. it was a freeing feeling. the people who matter to me have my number, they can call or text me if they really want to talk. i found that people i'm close with were sharing their political views, some which i strongly disagreed with, and that made me question if i really want them in my life. some things i'd rather not know.

Oh yeah, this happened to me too. Everyone did a color run and I was not invited, saw the photos on facebook and I was super hurt. Then my closest friend said "so and so asked where you were!" I thought, "home, because no one invited me!"