A Year Without Facebook

2014 was a year without Facebook. I was on it for 5 years, and in September 2013 I downloaded everything on my wall and deleted my account.

Why did I do this? It was because checking Facebook was becoming one more thing I "had" to do, like checking the mail or email. And since it sucks you in and is endless (like the rest of the Internet), it could be a colossal waste of time. And I've always found that not having something (such as a TV for most of my adult life, or a car for three years, or ice cream in the freezer) makes it a lot easier not to spend (waste) time (and money) doing it.

The final nail in the Facebook coffin was its constantly-changing privacy policies, and inflexible rules for what was public and what was private, and how much control I could have over my account. Plus the Facebook Corporation doesn't seem to be the nicest one to be supporting and giving control over my personal information.



Sure, the concept of Facebook is a good one, and I certainly appreciate its benefits. But the implementation was flawed. So I pulled the plug.

Do I miss it? Hardly ever. What I miss most is Facebook as a news source and a way to keep up with (or more accurately, spy on) friends. My wife has always been better-informed than me, and she still keeps me up to date about the most important news. I can't say that she or my other Facebook "Friends" appreciate my absence though. I'm sorry it didn't work out. But I'm not going back.

Don't get me wrong--I love my friends. But I hate computers--and the controlling billionaires that make them work. Have you noticed that Google Earth imagery is now black when you aren't logged in? Insidious.

Not being on Facebook has freed up time for me to explore Twitter. Twitter initially was very inaccessible, with the hashtags (#) and @'s and short URLs and people using shorthand for things, it really didn't make a lot of sense, and seemed hard to figure out. So I needed the formerly-used-by-Facebook mental space free to explore it.

How has Twitter worked out? Well, after getting over the accessibility hump (# is just a keyword that makes it easy to search for posts on a certain topic, @ is just someone's Twitter handle, and you learn to appreciate the character limit--most of the time), I'm pretty happy with it. You know where you stand--everything is public--there are no cliques or illusions of privacy. It is simple. Since few of my "Friends" were on it, I initially used it as a news source--something at which it excels. As I've followed more and more non-news real people, I've gotten a bit of the "keeping up with friends" feel of Facebook back without the overload (so far). I've found I have to be careful about what fills my Twitter feed, and carefully screen anyone before following them--or block their posts from my feed if they tweet too much. You can create a list of manic tweeters that you check once in a while, but don't follow. I'm almost putting @yosemitenews on that list, but not quite yet since I'm usually happy to see their tweets (despite the repetition).

Twitter isn't how I want to keep up with friends--it is how I want to keep up with news and things on the Internet. I don't want to go back to the days when friends filled each other's email with links--sharing links is what Twitter is for--but I'm doing that again, and I'm not sure I like it. The key is to figure out which tool is best at which job so that computer time is minimized. Email is better than Twitter for or texting for correspondence, LinkedIn seems like a good place to keep contacts, and now I'm on ResearchGate! The social media networks are endless! I just need to figure out how to keep up with my inbox. In 2015 I think I'll unsubscribe from email lists and follow organizations on Twitter instead. You can follow me on Twitter--I usually just post interesting links, occasional photos, and my new blog posts.

And then there is snail mail. My sister and I are going to try to send real letters to each other. We will use more oil and trees, but maybe save some electricity and screen time. Anything that gets us off our screens and back into the real world is a good thing.