Perhaps quitting Facebook will begin a cascade of new choices that leads me in the direction of living my intended values. Perhaps. That is to say, quitting Facebook feels like the ethically and morally right choice for me but I’m not on any high horse. I use Amazon Prime way too much, for example, and am not ready to look at quitting that (yet).
Why am I quitting Facebook? Here are some of my reasons:
Greed. I believe greed is at the root of all evil. The desire to have more more more more more, is what drives Facebook. What started out as a simple (disgusting) little application was then fed by the poison of selfish capitalist greed. Facebook will never be a part of the way of life I aspire to: “just enough, and not too much.”
Addiction. I don’t even *enjoy* using Facebook for the most part, but I keep doing it. I don’t consider myself an active user, despite checking it many (many!) times each day because I know others who use it even more. But I do use it a lot, so many “just checking” visits. Ugh! This compulsive behavior leads me off a spiritually-centered path.
Control. It drives me bananas that the site determines whose posts I will or won’t see. As its algorithms try to “customize my experience” (vomit!) I suddenly get lots of posts by one person or another, typically folks I don’t know all that well. It’s super-frustrating. Yes, I could create lists or whatever, to see just the people I’d like to see, but I’d rather see *everyone’s* stuff as they post it without having to spend time manually customizing.
Ads. Ugh, again. Sponsored posts and other ads. Even with ad-blockers, that garbage comes through. Sometimes I have more sponsored posts than posts from friends.
Fear. It makes me angry that when I considered quitting Facebook, I felt afraid. I felt like my business might suffer, that I’d miss out on important socio-cultural events, that “these days we ‘have to’ have a presence on Facebook.” Because my business survived and thrived before Facebook, I know it’s a lie that I need it now. The truth is, I get new clients via word of mouth, not from Facebook.
Surveillance Capitalism. This is where I know that quitting Facebook won’t solve the problem, but it is part of why I’m quitting. I heard an interview with Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” and her argument that our personal information is a new commodity. As she says, rivers and meadows were turned into “real estate” and our personal information is now a commodity being bought, sold, and traded. I’m currently in too deep (see my mention above of using Amazon Prime), so I’m not free of this. It simply feels like deleting Facebook will be a step in the right direction.
I will miss the people. I will miss the former high school classmates who I got to know through Facebook better than I knew them back then. I will miss seeing people’s children on the first day of school, and sharing photos of my own. There’s quite a bit of good in the people who are using Facebook, for sure. I’ve been gathering snail-mail addresses from as many people as I can so after I delete I will at least be able to exchange annual updates with folks.
I certainly understand there are many compelling and understandable reasons to keep Facebook. I’m not shaming people who keep using it. I’m just letting you know why I’m quitting, how I already feel lighter just imagining being done with it, and that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits for me.