Whenever I teach or present information about social media, I always share my memories of Facebook in its early days. I joined in 2006, as and when access was by invitation only. I was a senior in high school in my first class of the day - Computer Science - and my classmates and I were invited by someone from another high school who had gotten an invite from someone in college and shared the love. We thought we were so cool LOL.
I loved being able to see what was going on with friends who had gone to other schools. By the time I enrolled as a freshman at Jackson State, Facebook had started to become a regular social practice for us. Friending parents, teachers, church members and any “grown ups” was unheard of and we took bulky digital cameras to the club on college night just to take photos to upload in an album.
Aside from how much I enjoyed it in its early days, I am intrigued and inspired by Mark Zuckerberg. He literally created a product that changed the world from his college dorm room. I get goosebumps just thinking about it! As with all changes though, you have pros and cons.
Lately the cons have been rather overwhelming and to keep it 100 with you, it’s just way too much going on on Facebook these days. All the extra-ness is making me seriously consider only using it for my businesses and/or removing people I don’t know personally or have never interacted with on some level (which would take hours and hours to do).
Here are my main reasons why.
5. Spam
If I get another game invite or message about making money or winning a gift card, I’m gonna scream! There should be a way that we can block all game requests instead of having to individually block each game. The chain messages and gift card scams are also extremely annoying.
4. Too many “friends” that aren’t friends
I have over 4,000 friends on my profile and I have no clue who some of them are. I’ve had the same profile since freshman year in college (I started a new one shortly after I graduated high school) and back then I was adding anyone who requested me. Now that I’m older and I desire less clutter in my life, I want to be connected to those who I’m truly connected with instead of having to sift through the junk on my newsfeed.
3. Overwhelming negativity, criticism and judgement
According to Facebook, we’re all supposed to behave the same way and believe in the same thing. No one can have a difference of opinion, you’re judged for every single thing that you post, the assumptions made about your life are your fault, you have to censor your posts to be liked and so on. I can’t deal.
2. Unwarranted opinions and debates
Newsflash! My status updates, point of view, photos, beliefs and anything else associated with me is not up for debate nor there for you to share your opinion. For some odd reason, people feel like what someone posts on their page is fair game just because it’s online and it’s not. Unless someone asks for your opinion or asks to engage in a debate, you do not have the right to do that. Public pages and groups are for that, not someone’s personal profile page.
1. All the noise
The main reason that I’m considering quitting the network is all of the noise. I don’t have a better word to describe it. Logging into Facebook and scrolling my newsfeed is equivalent to a migraine headache. If my brain had arms, it would wave them saying, “Noooooo. Log off now, I can’t take all this.” Some of what I read and see is downright exhausting and I’m over it.
I think I’ll start with a friends list cleanse and then make my decision from there but something has definitely got to change.
Your turn to talk…
Have you ever considered quitting Facebook? Why or why not?
