{"id":26848,"date":"2019-02-10T18:08:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T00:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=26848"},"modified":"2019-03-28T21:22:38","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T02:22:38","slug":"taking-a-break-from-facebook-is-a-step-to-retake-control-over-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=26848","title":{"rendered":"Taking a break from Facebook is a step to retake control over my life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For many reasons, I’m leaving Facebook — at least temporarily.<\/p>\n

I don’t like drama queens on Facebook who make a big deal of deleting their accounts, but I also don’t want to just disappear without explanation.<\/p>\n

I’d like to just delete my account entirely, but I fear I might regret that at some point, so I’m taking a small step toward that eventual goal. At some point, I’ll re-evaluate things and decide whether to move on to de-activating or even deleting the entire account. For now, though, I’ve deleted both Facebook and Facebook Messenger from my iPhone and closed the browser tab in Safari on my MacBook.<\/p>\n

I’ve mentioned this before, but I joined Facebook only because an ex-girlfriend wanted me to about 10 or 12 years ago. I didn’t really see the point of it. I eventually understood the point, but I don’t like the effect my use of Facebook is having on me.<\/p>\n

Facebook has proven itself time and time again to be a company that doesn’t care about the privacy of its users. Listening to company reactions every time it’s caught doing something illegal or unethical makes it clear that its decision-makers simply don’t have the same values that I do.<\/p>\n

Even if the company didn’t regularly prove how little it cares about its users, I don’t like the psychological effects Facebook has had on me. Many of those effects are the same with any form of social media, and I have strong reservations<\/a> about every one of them. I’m just not ready to go so far as to ditch them all.<\/p>\n

I use Twitter so sparingly that I’m not giving that one up yet. I do think Twitter is a toxic environment for a lot of people, but I follow fewer than 300 people there and aggressively block anybody who seems toxic. So for now, I might still appear on Twitter. But let’s be honest. How often does anything I have to talk about fit into a tweet?<\/p>\n

For now, I’ll still be using Instagram, too, even though it’s owned by Facebook and has been making changes lately that I’m not happy about. Fortunately, the way I use Instagram — posting pictures of cats and dogs<\/a> on one account and mostly nature<\/a> on another account — doesn’t lend itself to the sort of toxic interactions which I want to get away from.<\/p>\n

I tried to change my use of Facebook in ways that might have made it less toxic and I did make quite a bit of progress. I slashed my list of “friends” from 5,000 (the limit) to the current 692. As it stands now, I have more “followers” than actual connections, but this change still hasn’t been enough.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to say whether my problems with Facebook are inherent to the service or they’re just flaws in me. I just know that I’ve ended up spending far too much time and energy on something which has a remarkably small positive return for me.<\/p>\n

In a lot of ways, I suspect we were all better off before we knew the constant random thoughts of other people. In the past, we could have assumed most other people were like us — at least deep down — in their reasoning, their values and their temperament. For me, Facebook has made it impossible to maintain that fiction.<\/p>\n

Seeing the raw and unfiltered thoughts of so many people — and coming face to face with evidence of such strong dysfunction in humanity — has been too much for me. When I stick with my own life and the lives of the people I know, that’s a scale I can emotionally deal with. When I’m hit with the tidal wave of what appears insanity in the public, it’s overwhelming.<\/p>\n

For me, that creates an existential crisis. When I see the unfiltered nonsense which I see, it makes me feel despair that nothing can change — and that leads to inaction on my part. I want to narrow my focus to the things I can change.<\/p>\n

There are some people with whom I never interact except on Facebook and I’ll miss some of those folks. But everything in life is a tradeoff — and the tradeoff I’m making now isn’t worth the effects it has on me. And it’s not as though nobody can get in touch with me. My real-world contact information is easy to find for anyone who’s interested.<\/p>\n

I’m not under the delusion that “you’re going to miss me when I’m gone.” I’m not mad at anybody and I don’t feel unappreciated or any of the things the drama queens cite when they leave. I just need to retake some control over my life that I’ve given to social media — and this is a first step.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For now, I’m not deactivating the account. I’m changing my profile picture to make it clear what I’m doing and I’m posting a link to this article. One of the reasons I’m not immediately deactivating is that doing so caused some people to think I’d unfriended them when I did it for a couple of months about four years ago.<\/p>\n

Media have played a huge role in my life in the past. I still love traditional print media, but they’re dying. I have almost no interest in consuming any form of broadcast media anymore, although I don’t rule out producing some form of media — mostly online — in the future.<\/p>\n

I believe social media are destructive for our culture, but they’re just one element of a toxic brew that is making modern culture so ugly — and getting worse. More importantly for myself, I need my time and attention for other things which can help change my own life.<\/p>\n

My articles here will continue to automatically publish to Facebook, but I won’t be posting anything else — and I won’t be reading anything that’s posted there.<\/p>\n

If you need to get in touch with me, email to davidmcelroy@mac.com<\/a> is the easiest way. And if you actually know me, you can always do something really old fashioned and pick up the phone to call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many reasons, I’m leaving Facebook — at least temporarily. I don’t like drama queens on Facebook who make a big deal of deleting their accounts, but I also don’t want to just disappear without explanation. I’d like to just delete my account entirely, but I fear I might regret that at some point, so Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[458,407],"class_list":{"0":"post-26848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-facebook","8":"tag-social-media","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-6Z2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26848"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27991,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26848\/revisions\/27991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}