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This Woman Is Quitting Facebook: Here’s Why

Jill Krasny for Business Insider
Posted on Apr 20, 2012

Here’s another fun post from our friends at Business Insider:

I’m quitting Facebook because it makes me feel like a loser.

I don’t mean reading posts about babies taking first steps and people flaunting their engagement ring makes me feel bad.

I mean that the simple act of logging in, scrolling the news feed and posting about something mundane I did isn’t worth my time.

I’m about to turn thirty, and as such, I’m looking at every decision in my life.

And after weighing the costs and benefits of visiting of Facebook, I’ve realized I get nothing out of it.

The truth of the matter is that Facebook is no substitute for a phone call or dropping by a friend’s apartment to catch up over coffee.

For some people that’s the point—all they want is a glimpse of their friend’s lives. I don’t want that. And I don’t want to read the musings and rants of people that have floated through my life, but aren’t really friends.

Which brings me to the second reason I’m quitting: the pressure to add people I’d rather not let into my life. Whether it’s a parent’s friend or someone I met out, I’d just rather not do it or feel guilty for letting their friend request go ignored. There’s a professional me, an off-work me and neither needs to be on full-display, all at once.

The mind-boggling privacy settings and inability to categorize “friends” has also been frustrating. Unlike Google Circles, which featured the ability to lump acquaintances in one group and family in another, achieving the same results on Facebook is a 30-minute endeavor that doesn’t always work. With all the drop-down menus to click through and the confusing “Friends” vs. “Only Me” settings, I tend to abandon the process altogether.

Finally, and this might be the biggest thing pushing me to leave, I don’t like the idea of Mark Zuckerberg having access to something I posted at 21 when I didn’t know any better. A marketer doesn’t need to know it, and I shouldn’t have to wonder where that information is being stored or what it’s going to be used for.

So I’m going to dump Facebook at the end of the month when I turn 30. Hopefully, I won’t feel like a loser, standing on the outside of the world’s biggest social network.

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  • Jcburns06

    I did it for a few months> Its nice to have more time do do other things! good luck girl! 

    i have mine still though.

  • Kyla H.

    Hi Jill, thanks for posting this! I’m 23 and deleted my Facebook account for good in February 2012. I had been increasingly less active on the site and kept deleting information off my profile for a while. But then I was so fed up with the whole idea of the “timeline” and having my naive, 17-year-old self in status-update-form coming back to haunt me, that I just deleted my account and haven’t looked back since. 

    The security/privacy issues are what really bothered me, but I also felt it was becoming increasingly dangerous, especially with the younger generations (over-sharing information, using it to bully or harass others, and using it to present a false image). I worry that it’s gone past the point of just being a way to connect with friends, family and others around the world, and is now headed into even more dangerous territory. I also felt like I wasn’t contributing anything worthwhile by having an account and am happier with not being involved with it at all. 

    I don’t think you’ll be a “loser” for being on the outside of Facebook. Many people admit they couldn’t give up their Facebook addiction and it makes me a little sad. I think there are so many more wonderful things we can do with our lives than having to worry about writing a witty status update, posting the perfect vacation photo or checking in to see the wedding photos and baby news of people we don’t even really keep in touch with anymore. 

  • Cleri

    More power to her!! I, like this woman, gave up fb about a year ago. I still have an account and only log in about once every few months, and when I do, am always reminded of why I quit. 
    Over the past few years, I started getting increasingly annoyed by the fb habits of my “friends”. My newsfeed was populated by “I love my life, it’s so awesome” posts, people complaining about something, things people cooked for dinner, and the occasional news stories that people would re-post directly from a news website (Sorry, but I don’t care what you made for dinner, and if I had wanted to read the news, I would have gone onto CNN instead of fb). After blocking the most serious offenders, my newsfeed continued to be flooded with pics of girls posing with that duck-face smile showing off their outfits, people’s un-cute babies, un-cute dogs, uninspired wedding photos, and inane status updates about things that were neither funny nor insightful. It essentially reminded me why most of these 400+ people never made it into my close circle of friends. I got rid of my wall so people would have to contact me through a real mode of communication. When I got my smartphone, I refused to install the fb app. And finally, I quit logging on every day. (It’s funny, because after about 2 months of inactivity, fb sends you these emails essentially begging you to come back…I fell for it once and was instantly aggravated the second I logged on).

    I have a pretty busy life and have enough problems getting stuff done without wasting time on fb. When I DO have downtime, I go onto washingtonpost or learnvest and read a few articles that actually enrich my life as opposed to making me dumber. Or I pull up my friends’ blogs that I KNOW will have something clever to say.  If I am wondering what a friend is up to, I email, text, or (gasp) call them…my real friends are the ones who will do the same. I highly support cutting back on and/or quitting fb…unless the majority of your fb friends are hilarious individuals who always have something worthwhile to say, you won’t miss a thing.

  • insight

    Right….. I know lots of people that have given up facebook for a period of time….You know they still have all of your information after you leave right? In fact, if you ever decide to join again, your profile almost looks like you never left……just saying.

  • K Rogers

    I think its sad that you find facebook plays an important enough role in your life that you would go out of your way to delete it. You genuinely feel you couldn’t leave it alone unless you deleted it, don’t you? Like if you were a smoker with a cigarette pack. It is good for keeping in touch with people, seeing photos of shared time together. I see the friends I have on facebook except for those who live far apart now. And isn’t it rather weak minded to feel obligated to accept a friend request, just don’t do it! I would say use facebook in a more positive way.

    • Sam

      I think you’re excuses to not delete the account are weak. I bet you work for fuckerberg

  • Jac7

    I’m off Facebook and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’ll never go back. And I completely agree, I didn’t want my entire life on display at all times for people that aren’t really my “friends” just people I’ve met at random points in my life. 

    I felt liberated. And I love to watch people’s stunned reactions when you tell them you aren’t on Facebook. Don’t live the norm because everyone else does.

  • Jenine

    Make sure you Google around to find out how to get them to permanently delete your data.  They certainly don’t make it easy: as another poster mentioned, even after you supposedly delete your profile, they keep all your profile intact for at least 6 months in case you decide to re-join.  Then, they keep your photos and data indefinitely.  If you write to some corporate e-mail, they will supposedly remove this data from their servers, but I’m still not even sure I believe that.   

    One protip if you are the type that is likely to cave and rejoin, but you are really serious about quitting: before you delete your profile, spend an hour manually deleting all of your friends, photos and posts.   Then, if you decide to log back on later, it will be too much overhead to restore the profile. 

    Good luck, and see you on the other side of loser-dom!

  • Msfire58

    I have stopped using FB.  The last straw was when I read about something that should have been told to me face-to-face or on a phone call.  I don’t miss it all and just wish I would have stopped before I even started.

  • Josh

    Are you on myspace now? Bahaha jk…I just quit FB too, just wasnt spiritual for me…God gives us freewill. Theres only two emotions, love and fear, aand I choose love!

  • theshlaay

    WHY IS THIS SUCH A BIG DEAL! Ugh I hate facebook and it’s domination over society.