Why we’re not on Facebook
I appreciate that it’s inconvenient for people that we don’t have a presence on Facebook but it’s a conscious decision and it’s one that I personally, as the hub around which this thing rotates, am very firm on.
I was a relatively early adopter and heavy user of the platform in it’s early days but over time I’ve come to see it as an increasingly corrosive time sink.
I have a real issue with how all pervasive they’ve got - the fact that it is perceived as odd to the point of eccentricity that we don’t have a presence on there is very telling to me about how far our unquestioning acceptance of the platform as a part of our lives has got.
I also think that at heart they don’t have good intentions - I don’t think they really care about people. What I actually think they are doing is strip mining people like a resource. And properly gouging them at that. People I talk to often mention the relentlessness of social media and how tired they seem of all the interaction. It might just be a coincidence, but my mental health has significantly improved since I stopped using Facebook.
Since I left, I have to say that I haven’t missed it and all the things that seemed to be tying me to the platform - “oh I’ll lose touch with people”, or “I’ll miss out on important stuff” - have not been borne out. My friends still contact me with the same regularity. No one has ever said “oh, you must have totally missed this” and it be about anything other than some pointless, boring faux drama. And I have a saved myself a lot of time that was spent endlessly, pointlessly scrolling.
We are on Twitter though, which I acknowledge can be an equally pointless and toxic platform. There’s also nothing to say that at some point I won’t find a platform that works for me and join that. I am happy to own my status as a hypocrite.