Why I Quit Facebook
If you knew me between the years 2011 - 2016, I was a hard person to find on social media. Friends who were picture-happy on Facebook were annoyed they couldn’t tag me in our girl’s trip photos, new people I met asked me what my Snapchat handle was and employers had a very skimpy LinkedIn profile to review.
Why?
Because I hated social media.
I was part of the inaugurating 2006 class of (then called) TheFacebook.com where only a dozen accredited colleges and universities across the country had access to join. However, in a few short years, Facebook went from being a college-only social connector to a platform with a dizzying news feed (I remember classmates rebelling against the new “stalker” tool) and open to all people with a valid email address allowing Donna from Accounting in my new post-college job to see what I was up to last weekend.
No thanks.
After my wedding in October of 2010, I had harvested more photos than I needed from friends and family, and I decided that Facebook was taking up too much of my time - both physically and mentally. So in the spring of 2011, I decided to close down my account.
And it. Was. Awesome.
What I experienced is something to similar to most people who “take a break” or “break-up” with Facebook altogether.
Friends who were really friends, stayed friends. I still knew about weddings, births and vacations - usually before they happened.
I didn’t have photo-anxiety when I went out with people or took a vacation. Which photos would I post to social media? Did I get the perfect sunset shot? Ugh, my hair looks frizzy in all of these!
I didn’t feel the need to “keep up” with an online persona that was a mere shadow of who I was nor did I have to check privacy settings every few months to make sure all was in order.
Of course, this changed in 2016 when I began a job as a Marketing Director and needed to manage a Facebook page. I did everything I could to create a “fake” profile but - shockingly - that’s not easy to do. I liked living “off the grid” and I wasn’t ready to get back into the social sphere of Facebook (especially when at this time, I was newly divorced). So I did the next best thing. I began a whole new profile with 0 friends and no history.
To this day, that’s the Facebook profile I use. It has very few photos on it. Most are - of course - tags from my high school best friend who insisted going back in time and tagging me in old photos during the time I wasn’t on Facebook. I have (maybe?) 200 friends who I rarely seek on there, and the ones I accept are 60% business contacts with the rest a mix of family and close friends.
Like many women my age, I spend most of my time on Instagram, and it’s there that I am very careful about what I post and who I allow to follow me. I am still a fairly private person, and you aren’t going to find many vacation photos or relationship selfies.
Social media has definitely changed, but I haven’t. And that’s part of the biggest draw for me as a business owner of a content marketing firm. What do I like on social media? What do I buy from ads? What stories do I connect with?
Because, to be honest, if I’m moved to make a purchase or contact a company on social media, they are doing something right.
It’s this critical eye that influences how we support our clients. We’re not just going to post something just to post it. Why are we posting it? What’s the story? What’s the goal? I’m grateful to work with brands and companies that know who they are and what they want. And those are the ones that are going to get the hardest customers (me) to buy.