Deleting a Facebook account (perhaps becoming a social outcast)

I suppose nearly a billion of us have a Facebook account. I resisted the urge for a while and gave in a few years ago, creating a Facebook account for myself. I’m sure my experiences with Facebook have been similar to many of yours, though I’ll note a few ‘quirks’ about my use of the site:

• The vast majority of what I posted was humor (or attempts at humor). I’ve always been somewhat paranoid about sharing too much personal information on the site.
• I never installed any third-party applications, avoiding Zynga’s games and perhaps some spam along the way.
• I installed the app for my phone, but it never properly mapped to my account and let me post from it. Mobile posts came via a phone-based browser, so it always was inconvenient to update status.
• I limited my ‘likes’ to other posts and not businesses and such.
• I never ‘checked in’ anywhere.

All of that to say that, in some ways, I’m not the type of user that Facebook wants. I’m unwilling to haphazardly share information and am perhaps a bit too aware or concerned about the targeted advertising that would find its way to my page.

To the point, then. As the post title indicates, I finally decided to delete my Facebook account. This shouldn’t be a monumental thing, but my own reaction and that of others prompts me to type some thoughts about it. The first question that I’ve been asked by several people is “why did you do that?” Honestly, the tone from a few has been incredulous! Why? Why?! WHY would you DO that?! I’m not going to re-hash many of the good points in this article, but some of the reasons are contained within it and it’s worth a read. I’ve already stated that my use of the site didn’t conform to their target user. Frankly, part of the reason was that I started to become disturbed by some things that others were posting. I won’t share the details, as you likely have the same type of posts in your ‘news feed.’ Suffice to say that there are some people hurting out there and their status updates are cries for help or attention. But wait, I can just delete that friend, right? Yes, but seeing some of those posts made me think about the rest of what I was seeing on the site. Sure, I reconnected with some old friends and I saw some good pictures of friends’ children. I also learned way too much about a few people, saw family members post awful information with fraudulent accounts, got many friend requests (and accepted some) from people I couldn’t pick out of a lineup and… over time… I noticed that I was looking at posts out of habit and not really learning anything at all. I was loitering – logging in and loitering.

Fair enough. What about the second question? The one I keep asking myself. Given everything I just typed, why did I struggle with this decision? Why does this seem like a big deal? There is definitely a fear of being disconnected. There was very little value in the vast majority of connections I made, but I did value those few. Why not simply delete 95% of my ‘friends’ and keep the account? I think it’s that I didn’t want to offend them. I think it’s the realization that most of my real connections are made in person, outside of the web-based social networking landscape, but some legitimate social connections were more virtual in nature. Sadly, some if it is voyeuristic in nature, being unwilling or unable to avert a social eye to some scandal that a ‘friend’ is bold/crazy/clueless enough to post for others to see. I had threatened to delete my account several times prior, lamenting in status updates that the site was a useless marketing tool and providing little of relevance or redeeming value. If you really want to launch a good marketing campaign, we recommend you to visit https://www.promo-advertising.co.uk/media-types/television-ads.

I don’t know that there’s a point to this ramble, but I may come back to it at some point and see how my attitude changes. For a couple of days, I almost instinctively looked for my Facebook phone application after having deleted my account. Was it ‘Facebook withdrawal’? In my case, it passed. Am I, as my title indicates, the Hester Prynne of the social networking world… an outcast for no longer being a citizen of Facebook? Maybe I’m just being overly dramatic. Do you get great value from Facebook, or is it getting great value from you? Have you deleted an account? Would you? If so, would you have second thoughts or have friends who would be in shock were you to do this? With the Facebook IPO announcement, I’ll make a prediction and end the post. I think Facebook is at or near its apex. I’ve talked to several high-school kids who have abandoned Facebook in favor of Twitter. I joke that it’s because they care much more about what they say than what their friends have to say. Facebook was cool to them before their parents found out about it and logged in. I think the kids are headed toward something else. It will be fun to see what happens…