May 2016. After much deliberation, I deactivated my Facebook account. It was nothing due to privacy issues or the fact FB uses user data for advertising. Instead it was due to lifestyle issues.
Like most people, I use Facebook in free time. Unlike most people though, I never do anything in my free time without any learning, experimention or realization opportunities. After using it thoroughly last 2years I realized FB is not good for me for the following reasons:
1. I don’t really care who went to a party, who got married , who went on a holiday, who had a blast with their spouses or children. Frankly I don’t even care whose birthday it is. Most I don’t care is how much someone appreciates another person. I don’t care who has a new philosophy. So since Facebook contains all these things I don’t really care about and I’m addicted to it like others who care, then obviously I am in the wrong place.
2. The concept of liking and accepting friend request is ridiculous. What are we lose by doing that every time? Yet we refrain. We calculate as though it cost us money. Those who post pics expect likes. All illusions that make us greedy without basis.
3. Nothing educational is there. In fact it is worse than newspapers. FB is not about making a world a better place but a place of bragging and gossip. Now it’s the place to be for advertizers because billions are trapped in the illusion of an unreal world that acts as a slow poison of happiness and qualm.
4. FB has devalued friendships. Those were about saying “Hi” when we meet. But with all of them online, the impossibility of doing so, forces us to ignore them. This habit extends to real life where we too ignore friends when we meet.
Few days have passed since I quit FB and I use my free time doing what I love most:
1. Think and Feel
2. Read and Learn
3. Write and Express myself
I feel change in my mental peace. It was always high but it is extremely deep now. Did FB do much damage ? I’d say it deprived me of being truly me.
Now I’m not returning to FB. The billions trapped probably if they read this will call me a fool. Yet I chose freedom from a deluded world made for money by FB.
