Why did I quit? Well I found myself addicted to knowing what was going on in people's lives and sharing quirks in my own life. I spent a lot of time there. I felt connected to others. But slowly over time I came to realize that it was all a mirage. I didn't have any true/real connections/friendships because of FB. I think there was about 60 people on my friends list. I looked it over and asked myself who I wanted to stay connected to via this tool called FB. There was only one and she was the one who invited me to join in the first place. So I made the rash decision to start deleting my friends list one by one. I continue to be on FB with this one person because she posts pictures and videos of my cousins children there I want to be able to see them. Other than that I have decided I want to be more intentional about connecting with others and them with me. No more blind advertising of my life and all its quirks with a click of a button on a status line.
Let me tell you it has been very freeing. I no longer feel the need to be attached to my computer feeding my infojunkie addiction ways and being snoopy peeking into others lives. I like my freedom.
Now I have the time to be more intentional in my communication and my time. I will feel the need to call friends and family to see how they are doing and what is happening in their lives. I will have time to invest in relationships here in the real world and not the digital world. My last status before I quit said ...
I am going back to the world of staying in touch with people without Facebook....
If you want to stay in touch -"my email address"
My aunt commented back that FB was just like email, so why quit? I replied to her via email and said that actually FB is not like email at all. FB is blind advertising, at least email is intentional communication. A friend said it like this - "I never call my friends anymore because I know what is happening in their lives because of FB." She found they no longer got together like they used to because they were interacting on FB.
I made the decision to be more intentional in my actions in all areas of my life, thus FB had to go. I want genuine sought after connection, not random shallow displays on a web page.
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I see I am not the only one quitting:
If you compare how people communicated before Facebook came around and what people consider communication today, things have clearly changed. I'm not talking about the 140 character limits twitter imposes either. My facebook network had some several hundred people in it, many of whom i met randomly, and decided to keep very loose contact with. Instead of making a point to see them now and then, i got more and more focused to commenting and sharing random activities via the platform. When you consider how much mental overhead a single sarcastic facebook comment or post can take up, you have thirty light conversations all running in the background, and they come in via a torrential feed that bombards you with new messages all the time, it gets pretty hectic. It is nice to be able to interact with people you wouldn't otherwise get a chance to stay in contact with so easily, but that's the crux of the problem. All this mental overhead takes time away from staying in touch with the people closer to you. It's also much harder to shut off the flow when it becomes a habit. If i have things to do at home, as long as i don't nip over to the pub for a few beers, i won't be distracted by a constant flow of social information. But when i have a facebook account, it's habit to walk past my laptop, open up a new tab and kill another ten minutes replying to comments. Then when i try to talk to my family or close friends, i don't have the energy left to make a real conversation out of, especially one that doesn't resemble these shallow facebook conversations.
Cartoon - I quit FB - http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/english/2010/06/cartoon-i-quit-facebook.html
