I joined Facebook later than most people and left earlier than most people (several years before Meta and X.) I did have political reasons for it very definitely, but i want to talk about my main social reason for doing it.
Over time, i realized most of my interactions weren’t with people i most wanted to be in touch with, they were with the people who were most online and active.
I did a really slow migrate away to make sure everyone who wanted another way to contact me could do so. Surprisingly few people seemed interested, and of those who did take the information, very few reached out in the years following my departure. I stayed in touch with the people i planned to stay in touch with and some of those relationships did fade out over time.
The people who I interacted with the most created lots of very low stakes interactions. It’s easy to validate someone’s opinion or feelings online, and feeling validated can feel like friendship if you’re not being analytical about these situations. It’s similar to validation from mutuals who you don’t know in real life at all. Low stakes validation is a really nice snack, but i wouldn’t thrive if that was my only social sustenance. i was also concerned that being in too much of an echo chamber would make me rigid over time and i would start to avoid critical thinking, nuance, and navigating high stakes situations where there’s disagreement. Important skills when building community. Not everybody will be in perfect lock step in a community. There will be disagreements but a healthy community is an incredibly powerful thing, more powerful than any of us individually.
i wanted to get back to counting my friends as the people who would ask me to sit with them if they lost a loved one, who would visit me if i was in the hospital, the keepers of my lore and i of theirs, the people i could both celebrate and grieve with in the real world. People i could disagree with and still find ways to work together and support each other. It’s absolutely possible to have these kinds of relationships online and long distance, but I found that Facebook gave me a false sense that i was doing that when i really wasn’t.
I’m so glad i left. I have never regretted it. I often felt really depressed during the Facebook era, like something was missing, like my emotional wallet had been misplaced. Getting away from it let me appreciate once again that cultivating quality and not quantity is where it’s at.
I do sometimes miss having a window into the lives of people i knew a long time ago, but if i genuinely wanted to maintain that relationship, i can do that without Facebook!
Leaving Facebook helped me get more intentional and authentic about all of my relationships. I’m glad i left, and my relationships have all improved since then because I’m actively participating in them if that makes sense.
#Facebook #social media #social relationships #social interactions #meta #kiminoan blog
