Facebook is a social media site that was released in 2004  and has been an internet powerhouse ever since. Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg, who was a Harvard undergraduate student at the time of Facebook’s release. While Facebook has dominated the social media scene for more than 10 years, there has been recent disinterest in the social media site. This blog post will analyze the movement for people to delete their Facebook accounts.

Facebook is a website where one can share their life milestones and view other people’s life milestones. It has become a new form of life narrating. Instead of speaking with someone face to face to learn about their life story, individuals are able to learn about others on Facebook. Facebook is a revolutionary tool in communication. However, even though Facebook is an incredible tool and a new form of expressing life narratives, there are still people who choose to leave the social network site. While individuals are leaving Facebook due to various reasons. Some common reasons I have found include: Facebook is stressful, Facebook is a “time waste,” and there are privacy issues.

Facebook is thought to be stressful for many of its users. It has been reported that those who spend the most time on the site feel the most stressed. The audience one deals with can be stressful as individuals are sharing their lives with a magnitude of people and unable to truly see their reactions. Individuals can have a variety of Facebook friends, ranging from their immediate family to coworkers, to people they met at a social gathering. Most people act differently around their co-workers compared to how they act with their extended family. Therefore, it is difficult to cater a Facebook to fit both how one acts around their family, friends, coworkers, extended family, etc. Spending hours scrolling through social media, and curating one’s social media to be “presentable” to one’s Facebook friends is overwhelming. Especially as Facebook should be a place where individuals can be authentic. People who chose to leave Facebook to avoid this unneeded stress.

The statement that Facebook is not a productive outlet has also been argued. The Huffington Post states, “a real ‘social network’ wouldn’t be virtual. It would involve real people, meeting in a real, tangible, bricks-and-mortar building or outdoor place, where they might have food, drinks and conversation.” Facebook is a website that is created to socialize with other people, however, to socialize with these people, one is typically on a computer or cell phone and ignoring the world around them. Facebook can be an extremely non-productive activity, as it is easy to fall down the “rabbit hole” and spend mindless hours scrolling through a Facebook feed. Individuals who are always immersed in the Facebook sphere and reading other’s life narratives are ignoring the life narratives that are literally around them. The argument for leaving Facebook due to its time waste is that people want to be more productive. They want to be more active in their real-life relationships and spend time doing activities that are not online. They wish to experience life outside of their screens and focus on their own life narrative.

The final argument for why people are leaving Facebook is privacy. “Facebook is huge, full of brilliant security and privacy-focused people, but also a firm that makes its billions from advertising. Marketers are largely about numbers: the bigger Facebook gets, the happier those marketers are.” This quote by Thomas Fox-Brewster from Forbes magazine describes why Facebook is in a strange position. Facebook is a company that values the privacy of its users, however, they simultaneously want to make money. Nonetheless, sharing one’s entire life on the Internet is not preferable to everyone. Some individuals, wish to choose the information they want to be known. Facebook has made it easy for individuals to search for each other online. Facebook can also collect data from its users and can share them with marketers. Individuals, who make the decision to opt out of Facebook, also recognize that they are opting out of constantly having their Internet data recorded. These people value their privacy and not everyone feels comfortable with sharing their information online or having their Facebook data recorded. Therefore people value privacy over the communication Facebook delivers – they would like to disclose their life narrative at their own time and in their own way.

Personally, I use Facebook as a tool to connect with individuals across the world. With close family members who live across the world, Facebook has become a useful tool that I use on a regular basis. I like to be able to see how people are using social media as a way to narrate their lives. I have been friends with many people for years, and I can actively follow their lives by seeing how they use Facebook to share their life story. While I do acknowledge that Facebook is not perfect, and I agree with all the arguments for why people leave Facebook, Facebook does allow me to connect with family, old friends, new friends, and community members. So for now, I think I will still stick with Facebook.

 

Works Cited

Fox-Brewster, Thomas. “Facebook Is Playing Games With Your Privacy And There’s Nothing You Can Do About It.” Forbes, Jun. 29, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/06/29/facebook-location-tracking-friend-games/#78e1340835f9. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.

Nuñez, Alana. “Why Your Facebook Friends Are Stressing You Out.” Shape, https://www.shape.com/blogs/shape-your-life/why-your-facebook-friends-are-stressing-you-out. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017

Phillips, Sarah. “A brief history of Facebook.” The Guardian, July 25 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017

Robinson, Bill. “Facebook: The World’s Biggest Waste of Time?” Huffington Post, HuffPost News, Feb. 10, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/billrobinson/facebook-the-worlds-bigge_b_4585457.html. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.

Skinner, Annie. “10 Reasons You Should Consider Deleting Your Facebook.” Thought Catalog, Thought.Is, Oct. 27, 2014, https://thoughtcatalog.com/annie-skinner/2014/10/10-reasons-you-should-consider-deleting-your-facebook/. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.

The Telegraph. “Popular Facebook users ‘feel more stress,’” The Telegraph, Feb. 17, 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8330544/Popular-Facebook-users-feel-more-stress.html.  Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.

Vozza, Stephanie. “4 Compelling Reasons To Quit Facebook.” Fast Company, Jan. 13, 2014, https://www.fastcompany.com/3024685/4-compelling-reasons-to-quit-facebook . Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.

Walker, Leslie. “6 Reasons to Quit Facebook.” Lifewire, Tech Untangled, Sept. 18, 2016, https://www.lifewire.com/reasons-to-quit-facebook-2654270. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.

Young. “9 Reasons Why I Deactivated Facebook.” Young and Thrifty, https://youngandthrifty.ca/9-reasons-why-i-deactived-facebook/. Accessed Nov. 12, 2017.