

Shunning Facebook and Living to Tell About it - gallerytungsten
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/technology/shunning-facebook-and-living-to-tell-about-it.htm

======
richardburton
A couple of months ago I installed RescueTime (<http://www.rescuetime.com>).
After letting it run for a week it sent me an email with a summary of what I
had been up to. My heart sank. I had spent about 15 hours a week actively
using Facebook.com. 15 hours! That did not include all the times I would check
the iPhone app. I was well-and-truly Facehooked and I decided I had to quit.

Whenever my Dad puts down the morning paper, he asks himself: What have I
learnt? I started asking myself the same question after a session of
Facebooking and soon realised the answer was: nothing. Facebook openly admits
that it allows you to maintain more 'friendships' than should be possible. I
used to think that was a good thing. Now I do not.

I also realised that the main reason I logged into Facebook was not to check
up on other people, but to check up on myself. Had _my_ status been liked?
What photos had _I_ been tagged in? Which events was _I_ invited to? Facebook
was not really about others, it was about me. It encouraged me to navel-gaze
far too much. At times I felt like it was an anti-social network. Whenever I
did look through other peoples’ profiles the emotions were often negative:
jealousy, lust, disgust and sometimes horror. These things I want to
experience less, not more.

What amazes me most about Facebook is how it has changed the way people think.
I have genuinely overheard someone say: ‘Get a sick photo for Facebook!!!’ on
a night out - I was that person. I was that idiot. Since leaving Facebook I
have caught myself thinking: ‘I wonder how this will look on Facebook?’ -
those thoughts are slowly subsiding.

I think Facebook's mission, to get everyone to relentlessly share everything
with everyone goes too far. Life is about curating, about choosing, about
doing millions of opportunity-cost calculations and picking what you want and
rejecting what you do not. Friendships take blood, sweat and tears to
maintain. They take time, they take work, they take effort on both sides. They
are not easy but that is what makes them so great. For me, finding a group of
real friends is about sifting through the thousands of people I meet and
clutching onto a precious few who bring out my best side and who will be there
when the chips are down. Every hour I sink into browsing the updates of people
I do not really care about could be spent having a conversation someone I
love. Facebook allowed me to attach meaningless digital tendrils to hundreds
people and keep semi-acquaintances on life-support. I used to spend a
ridiculous of time scrolling through these acquaintances' status-updates. That
had to stop.

I like Twitter for two reasons:

1.) I know it is public - When I used Facebook I could never figure out
whether I had checked the right tick-boxes or slid the right sliders or placed
the right people into the right lists and so I was always wondering who could
see what. At times that could make me paranoid and scared - especially when I
was tagged in some annoying photos. With Twitter I know that everything is
public and I shape my tweets accordingly. There is no confusion.

2.) It reflects the true asymmetry of human relationships - In the real world
some people are ‘liked" or ‘followed’ more than others. When somebody follows
me on Twitter who I am not particularly interested in I do not feel compelled
to follow them back. With Facebook I felt so worried about rejecting
friendship requests that I always accepted.

Another thing that really scared me about Facebook: it had become my address
book. It took two weeks' work to get the Skype-names, email-addresses and
home-addresses of some of my _closest_ friends and greatest acquaintances -
that is awful.

I think socialising through technology is great. Skype, email, SMS and phone-
calls all share one commonality: they are, at their core, services that
facilitate one-to-one or one-to-few communication. That is how real social
interaction happen. They happen two people or just a few more. Somewhere
between a pair of people and a body of a thousand, groups form; people
coalesce; people _choose_ who they like to spend time with and do so. I _like_
choosing.

Anyway, the biggest thing I have realised since leaving Facebook is this:
leaving Facebook was not a big deal.

PS - If you would like to follow me on Twitter I am:
<http://www.twitter.com/ricburton> ;)

~~~
phillian
This - "Twitter... It reflects the true asymmetry of human relationships."

What I loved about Twitter is that it gave me the onus of choice to include or
ignore people that may have attended school with me, may have worked with me
at one point, etc... but for one reason or another I no longer wanted involved
in my personal lives. (Yes, I know Facebook has privacy walls but we all know
how permeable they haven proven to be, nevermind their disconcerting rewording
of the Terms of Service).

Twitter is also more inclusive and consistent with the 'whole character' of a
person. On Facebook it is easy to be typecast or become monofocused among one
group.. family, college classmates, frat buddies, whatever.

On Twitter I can lament my horrible Redskins every Sunday and talk affiliate
marketing, code, or fishing in Alaska without breaking a stride.

Not to mention, I think the barrier to communicating with people we identify
as 'out of reach' is much lower on Twitter than any other medium. Name an
author and with effort you can probably exchange with them on Twitter.

Getting them to friend you back on Facebook? Probably not.

For the record, I am: <http://twitter.com/phillian>

~~~
natesm
I like Twitter because it is simple[1]. 140 char messages, reverse
chronological order. _That's it_.

[1] I use Twitter for Mac, the website is kind of a mess actually.

------
shadowfiend
A few thoughts that probably buck the trend around here:

‘”I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,” said
Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends in
common with the woman. “At that point I thought, maybe this is a little
unhealthy.”’

Honestly, why is that unhealthy? I think there's probably more to this story,
but it's not like it doesn't happen in real life without facebook. You hang
with your friends, you exchange stories about someone you don't know, and then
one day you meet them and someone mentions “by the way, this was the person we
were talkin about when we said bla bla bla”. Yes, facebook probably makes it
easier, but I don't find this to be “unhealthy” in the least.

‘“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in
graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and
updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”’

I've heard this before. Honestly, I think it's because we're in this
transition stage where somehow this feels less real than a phone call. I would
argue that this _is_ a real connection. These pictures and updates often
communicate more than you necessarily would remember to in a phone call. The
purpose of a phone call is different, the interactions there are different. It
seems like if you're worried that you're not calling your friends anymore… You
should start calling your friends again.

I know I feel like I am exposed to more articles and jokes and opinions via
facebook than I would if I weren't on it. I interact with people I'm not
super-close with, and that's fine. To me, it's like HN, but with a different
set of people posting stuff to it, people who are close to my interests in a
way completely different from HN. It's more personal in some ways, and I feel
more free to be myself in some ways, while I feel more constrained in others.
It is, in short, the very definition of a different medium of interaction. I
won't say the same things on facebook that I do on HN, and I won't say the
same things on either of those that I will with my friends when we're having a
drink.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be free to shun facebook at all. But I think
there are some common complaints about facebook that simply stem from a
strange concept of what it is. Then again, I suppose if you're using it in a
way that's harmful to you, and you can't figure out how to make it less
harmful, it's probably a good idea to leave it altogether.

By the way, I probably spend at least 15 hours a week using facebook. That
fact doesn't particularly bother me. In the past, I've noticed this goes down
when I have other stuff to do. Facebook is just something that happens more
often when I have more spare time. If I really wanted to do something
different with that time, I would (though there's a decent argument here for
death by a thousand papercuts—or facebook visits).

~~~
tobtoh
”I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,

I don't think it necessarily unhealthy, but I guess it depends how you
interpret 'talk'. I actually read that line as that Blacomb hadn't
_communicated_ with her at all - for example, I've got a whole bunch of
'friends' on FB whom I used to interact with at College, but we've gone our
separate ways and now never speak to each other and all I see are their FB
updates. In that sense, I think it is unhealthy if you associate that passive
one-way comms as 'friendship'.

However, if you take his stament of 'never even talked to her' as literal
voice communications, then I agree that I think it's perfectly fine. If
theyare exchanging two-way comms on FB, I don't see it any different to a long
distance relationship of old where people wrote letters to each other.

------
k-mcgrady
For me Facebook has become essential. Using it for hours and hours everyday is
a choice though. You can benefit from having a Facebook account while only
checking it for a few minutes a day. I use it as an address book, event
planner, and messaging system.

I use the FB Messenger app on iOS largely as a replacement for SMS. I check
FB.com for details of events I am attending and to receive invitations I
wouldn't otherwise (unless they were small events with a few close friends in
which case I would receive a phone call). I also sync my Facebook contacts
through the iOS app to my phones address book which helps keep my contact info
up to date.

Using these functions I get lots of benefit and don't waste a lot of time. I
can waste time if I want but that is an active choice and not required to
benefit from the service.

I think Facebook is going to start becoming more and more essential. It is
becoming much more common that I meet someone new, and rather than exchanging
contact details we just ensure we are both on Facebook and connect that way. I
don't see this changing anytime soon.

------
whazzmaster
Many of my closest friends adhere to the "A2K" philosophy (Amish 2000) where
they try not to use any tech released more recently than 2000. They fail as
often as they succeed, but social networking is one area that they have
largely succeeded in staying away from. In a stunning revelation (and a large
dose of sarcasm), they found you do not need Facebook to remain close with
your friends.

I left Facebook a year ago because of THEIR haranguing; if my closest friends
refuse to use it then my news feed is just filled to the brim with useless
noise from high school (non-)friends and distant cousins.

Don't extrapolate anything from this or try it at home; this is what happens
when you go to school for computer science and work at a silicon valley tech
company yet every single one of your close friends was an english major in
college.

~~~
wes-exp
I haven't heard the term "A2K" before but it's ingenious. Is there a process
for granting exceptions to the timeline restrictions? Even real Amish have
exceptions like, "it's okay to use a gas-powered engine to harvest crops as
long as it's not providing locomotive force".

I'm fine with no Facebook (glad even), but smartphones are another matter.
What's the policy on them?

~~~
whazzmaster
Most of them grudgingly bought smartphones within the last year and now
wouldn't give them up. I yell at them about it but they do fail as often as
they succeed. On the other hand, one of them is doing a home birth... so there
is that, I guess.

~~~
wes-exp
Actually there are some compelling arguments for home birth aided by a
midwife. There is a documentary about it:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_of_Being_Born>

I think it's interesting that we've mitigated naturally occurring risks (such
as disease) to such an extent that technology itself now poses risks of often
similar magnitudes. Take preservatives: on the one hand keeping food fresh
prevents various ills, but on the other hand continually ingesting chemical
preservatives can cause disease itself such as cancer. The pushback against
vaccines is kind of a manifestation of this... or perhaps the _perception_ of
risk as I think the science doesn't bear out the fears in this particular
case. But in general, the idea that technology is always better seems to be
increasingly challenged; often with a legitimate scientific basis.

------
wakoumel
I think my view point is a rarity, but I really don't give a crap about social
networking (I did have a FB account until last year). I can't say my life was
any better because of it, and as the article points out, it can be a huge time
waster. And although I can trust institutions, I don't trust corporations. I'm
not saying FB is any worse than any other, but the idea that we're getting
something for free is just plain false. They use our data for profit and I
choose not to participate for that reason.

------
zalew
I somehow fail to understand why people make quitting facebook a story.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=why+i+quit+facebook> About 45,000 results

<https://www.google.com/search?q=i+deleted+my+facebook> About 3,440,000
results

~~~
whyenot
Does Facebook tell your "friends" that you have deleted your account when you
leave? If not it seems like the sort of thing many people would want to
announce somewhere.

~~~
joezydeco
Look up "Burger King Whopper Sacrifice" for the answer to that question.

~~~
whyenot
While interesting, I'm not really sure how "de-friending" 10 people in order
to get a mediocre hamburger has any relation to what happens when someone
deletes their _account_.

~~~
k-mcgrady
From what I have seen it depends. I don't think it is ever announced that you
leave. Sometimes you disappear from friend lists. Other times you remain but
when someone tries to view your profile they get a message it doesn't exist. I
think the reason they leave you in friends lists is because you can re-
activate your account.

------
jamesbkel
FTA >“I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,”
said Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends
in common with the woman. “At that point I thought, maybe this is a little
unhealthy.”

I agree with this, but I think it says more about how one USES Facebook. I use
it for organizing events and as a digital replacement for a rolodex. If I
wasted my time flipping through a rolodex, learning details about people who
were only acquaintances, I would consider that unhealthy too.

~~~
dwiel
One is designed to grab and keep your attention for as long as possible. One
is designed to make it easy to keep track of contacts.

~~~
chenga
I think that's an unfair statement though because Facebook can do a lot more
than a Rolodex. I think we need to know more about how people spend their time
on Facebook.

If they're spending time on games like Farmville, that's quite different from
spending time looking at photos/profiles/statuses

------
andrewfelix
I quit Facebook 4 months ago. The relationships that are important to me have
improved(even long distance ones), my productivity is up and my depression is
down (not sure how that works or if it's related).

I encourage you all to give it a try.

~~~
tobtoh
There has been studies done which show that the 'keeping up with the Jones'
aspect of facebook can increase depressive tendencies. So the improvement of
your depressions could be as a result of this.

The study was mentioned in this article in Slate:

Is Facebook making us sad?
[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/01/the_a...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/01/the_antisocial_network.html)

------
piotr_krzyzek
I've never really understood the whole Facebook and Social 'thing'. From a
business perspective, yes I see a point. I put myself and my clients up on all
the major sites to give them a) backlinks and b) a presence there (and done
right, some new leads!).

But other than that, I believe one person already mentioned this: "I don't get
all these 'I left facebook' articles/posts". I really don't get it.

I'm a geek and a nerd through and through, though everyone I know knows that
if I'm online (to chat via AIM or whatnot) then I'm free to 'chat' to. If they
have something more serious to talk about, they call or SMS. And most of the
time we talk about things IN PERSON. Share pictures, IN PERSON.

Sure I post to FB/TW here and there, but 10/15/20 hours of social media sites
and you're not getting anything from it and you think it's 'horrible' and
'evil' and you should do it less? WTF?

I don't get people. Spend 20 hours on social media if that's your thing, god
speed. Don't go whining to the rest of us when you find out your wasting your
life there.

I just don't get it ... at all. I understand the 'omg I just quit FB, this is
how I'm "dealing" without FB' ....

Completely biased rude opinion: I think it's pathetic.

------
mike-cardwell
I don't bother with the status updates. I don't look at peoples profiles. I
put the bare minimum info on there that I could, I locked down all of the
privacy settings. I purposefully made my profile difficult to find.

I friend my friends on Facebook and do very little else with it. The only
reason I have an account is so to make it easier for people to include me when
they organise events through it.

Works for me.

~~~
VonLipwig
I do the same, the only reason I keep the account is so people can include me
in events organised via Facebook.

The only other time I go on it is when I get an email notification saying
someone has sent me a message.

I don't bother with status updates or reading what other people write. If its
interesting they will tell me when I see them. Unsurprisingly when I do see
them I don't hear about 90% of the crap they put on Facebook.

------
billybob
I quit Facebook recently. Besides the fact that I don't trust Facebook to know
everything about me, my main motivation is that __I don't think it's about
real friendship __.

The Facebook mentality is "many friends". But one has limited attention. I'd
rather spend my attention developing a few deep friendships than many shallow
ones.

The Facebook mentality is "never lose touch". I think losing touch with people
is healthy. I'd rather make new in-person friendships than maintain every
acquaintance I've ever made.

The Facebook mentality is public communication: my comments to you are public
to everyone. I think real communication needs privacy. A one-to-one phone
conversation feels completely different than a public wall post.

I love friendships. But I don't think Facebook is about friendship. It's about
the monetizable illusion thereof. As someone else has written, it's a hangout
spot created by marketers, rigged with microphones and cameras and
advertisements.

Friending < befriending.

------
daimyoyo
I've had a facebook account for several years but my overall sentiment toward
it has become rather guarded. A young lady with whom I was friends in
elementary sent me am unsolicited friend request. She was someone I'd been
quite content to never hear from again. So I put my settings as private as I
can and remove my profile from google. Then about a month ago, facebook
suggests a friend who shares no mutual friends with me, whom I've never
mentioned, and who I hadn't even seen in years. How did facebook know I knew
this person? So now, I view facebook as a Rolodex. If I need to contact
someone, I'll go there, but that's it.

------
satori99
I have never had a facebook account, and likely never will.

The amount of pressure I came under to sign up, at various stages over the
last year, from peers is sometimes astonishing. It's like you can't be a real
person if your not listed.

My friends and family have stopped nagging me to join now, and people I knew
in highschool have mostly stopped asking my sister what happened to me.

~~~
vacri
It does get better. People get used to contacting you through normal channels
again, and they also learn that facebook is another 'in-crowd' and not
everyone is on it - you can talk to 'facebookers' on it, but not 'everyone'.

------
Qz
I don't use it, although I have an account to appease my other friends' need
to 'friend' me. How silly is that sentence?

------
codelust
Strange, recently posted elsewhere on a similar topic. This quitting thing
must be catching on and may soon become the in-thing.

This month I completed a year of deactivating my FB account. I have signed
into Twitter only thrice in the past three months and don't miss it much.
Deleted my Google+ account too a little while back.

What did I learn from all of that? It is that these platforms amplify you. If
you are prone to making bad use of your time (which is my chronic problem),
these platforms will take it to a different level. If you are making good use
of your time, these platforms can help you make use of it better.

I have made the transition from blaming the platform to seeing for myself that
I am the problem and I am still working on fixing that.

------
theorique
My response would be something like this:

"Oh my god! I can't believe I just quit Facebook. I can't wait to update my
status so that all my friends can see what I just did ... _oh, crap_... what
now?"

Seriously, though?

If FB (or anything else in your life) works for you, do it until it doesn't
work. Then change it. No big deal either way.

------
mixmastamyk
Meh, a lot of stories about people who make it sound as if it has to be all or
nothing. I used FB a lot in the early days like all new sites. Now I take a
look around once a week then get back to work; you can too. Keep the valuable
contact list but don't waste so much time.

------
jc123
The correction footnote seems eye-opening: Pew Internet and American Life
Project estimates 16 percent don't have cellphones.

~~~
DiabloD3
I don't have one, nor do I have a Facebook account. Still not seeing the
point.

