I have long been frustrated with Facebook, and recently I decided to deactivate my account. (Not completely delete, so my FB friends can still reach me via Messenger.)
It started a while ago, when over a relatively short amount of time, I went from about 800 friends down to 80. When I was still involved in roller derby, I used FB a lot for networking with other skaters and teams, as the Interleague Liaison for my own league, so there were a lot of people whom I had known casually, mixed in with people who were my best friends, people I went to high school/college/etc. with (including some former teachers), family members, etc.
I am lucky to be friends with a lot of cool people who get along with each other (and have even become good friends with each other!), but inevitably, when you put a bunch of people in a room together, there is bound to be some disagreement between people. And especially on social media, engagement is paramount, so people will share things that are clickbaity or anger-inducing (like, not that it's offensive, but is written to drum up outrage), so strong opinions tend to fly.
I had enough of it. This was even pre-pandemic, when we all spent 2+ years doomscrolling, so I've been tired a WHILE. I started whittling down my friends list, not because any one person did anything objectionable, but because I needed a quieter experience. (I am still following many of the same people on Instagram, which is a slightly different experience from Facebook.) I needed fewer voices, less yelling, less triggering, etc.
It still wasn't enough, though. Because apparently, Facebook still wanted me to see posts. Instead of just showing me my friends, it would suggest posts and pages to me, and its algorithm for suggesting would be TOTALLY off. Because Facebook likes to show you posts that your friends or the pages you follow have commented on, it would occasionally happen that I would see comments from the friends of mine who do actually like to argue in comments sections, and often they would be on posts of a political or social justice nature. If I happened to "like" the comment from my particular friend, Facebook would read that as, "Oh, she's engaging with this post that happens to express the complete OPPOSITE of what she believes in--let's show her more of that!"
I tried to go into my feed settings and interest list to delete some of the completely incorrect topics that they had generated for me, but it's kind of a losing battle--their machine brain just keeps on pumping out words and interests, and you can never truly whittle it down to what your real interests are.
So... that's frustrating.
Eventually I stopped scrolling through my FB feed much at all. I would log in to post my own things and check notifications, but that was it. Instead of spending much time there, I was retreating into my craft hobbies (and my Instagram feed has now been trained to show me primarily knitting and sewing #sorrynotsorry.) And then last week, I decided to just deactivate it.
As a result, yes, I am missing out on some of my friends' lives. That is my one regret, and the reason why I haven't deleted account completely. I don't know how long I'll be off Facebook, but I am not naive enough to believe that it will be forever.
But, I do have some more time back to myself. I used to get stuck on social media loops, first scrolling through Facebook, and then checking Instagram for a while, and then going back to Facebook to see what was new in the meantime, and so on, and so forth. Yes, it was a major time suck. It wasn't just checking posts, but also reading things and getting upset, and then that angry energy would just linger for a while, so that even if I wasn't actively looking at my feed, I would still sit there and think about how angry I was. (I'm an empath, and I feel things very deeply.)
I don't need that in my life. Nobody does. Does it suddenly make me a little less informed about WHAT'S GOING ON THIS VERY MINUTE IN THE WORLD? Yeah, but at least I am feeling more even-keeled. And I'm sleeping more--no more staying up late scrolling mindlessly on my phone.
It also means that I'm on other apps and websites (and my phone in general) a lot less, because I'm not doing the bouncing-around thing anymore. I don't feel compelled to know everything that's going on, and I look at Instagram if I want to see pretty pictures.
Am I living my life more? I don't know what that means, because, well, it's all living. I'm not suddenly using my spare time to go skydiving or pursue a PhD or anything. I think... I am resting more. I am breathing more. My thoughts are quieter, or at least, they are now more occupied with things that immediately concern me, rather than things I can't do anything about and that have nothing to do with me. (The whole Will Smith thing at the Oscars is a prime example of something that lived rent-free in people's heads and really shouldn't have, as well as everyone's "hot takes" on the incident.) I'm not completely free of all my previous frustration, but it has been mitigated for now, and I'm pretty content about my decision.