Reasons why I don't use Facebook
It has been a few years since I deactivated my Facebook account and I don’t regret it. People sometimes ask me why - well, I am neither asocial nor friendless. I am just one of those people who don’t use Facebook.
I like my privacy
Companies like Facebook trick you into thinking that you’re the customer and in control of your data. Unfortunately, you are the product and totally killing you privacy.
Facebook’s business model is to be the man in the middle; to track every move you, your family, and your friends make, to store all that information indefinitely, and continuously analyse it to understand you better in order to exploit you by manipulating you for financial and political gain.
Aral Balkan, Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons
Facebook has made it harder for users to understand exactly what they’re giving away - third parties pay to access your interests, photos, likes, purchasing intensions and connections. The data which is collected is more than you have imagined. Why should we let businesses privatize our social discourse?
I have alternatives
Not using Facebook doesn’t mean I cannot easily connect with people. I can always write an e-mail or make a phone call, I am also on Twitter.
As social animals we can’t bear the idea of missing out and so many find themselves placing their most intimate expressions onto a businessman’s hard-disk, buried deep in a data center in another country - one they will never be allowed to visit.
I don’t feel lonely
Friendships on Facebook are pasive and unhealthy compared with actual socialization. They even make us lonelier than before. I prefer investing my time in face-to-face meetings which make the whole interaction more personal and emotional.
I need to disconnect
Disconnecting means unplugging from the technologies we use and love. Always being connected can make us anxious or even addicted. Visiting a new place and/or staying offline helps me a lot when I’m feeling overwhelmed.
The ease of digital distraction has made us appreciate solitude with a new intensity. We savor being face-to-face with a small group of friends or family in one place and one time far more thanks to the digital sociality that so fluidly rearranges the rules of time and space.
I might want to reinvent myself
Not many people realize that anything posted online might come to haunt them permanently one day, yet everyone needs space to grow. I don’t want to document every aspect of my life, no matter good or bad, just to regret it a few years later.
What they don’t tell you is that it’s impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified…
William Gibson, Johnny Mnemonic (1981)
I don’t want to waste my time
Time is limited and learning how to prioritize is important. I am trying to reduce the number of things that require my attention so that I can happily apply more attention to those things I care the most about.