Life after Facebook?

I quit Facebook this week. Well, mostly.

After years of tottering on the edge, with bouts of extended usage countered by weeks away, I deactivated my account.

But I wasn’t ready to give up on the pages I manage for my businesses, which would have disappeared if I didn’t find an admin to take them over. So I created another account with the intention of using it to only manage my pages. Not to be friends. Not to endlessly scroll. Not to post my feelings of hope or outrage.

Two days later, I’m already breaking into jail and rejoining a private FB group with my music production peers. And I didn’t disable the account entirely – people can still message me on the Messenger app if I choose to install it.

The truth is, quitting Facebook is hard. I’ve invested heavily into this online service for years. I use it as a Rolodex for friends and acquaintances I’ve made over the years. I use it to promote my business and share any new offerings. I use it to keep tabs on what people are doing and to keep open the option of reaching out to reconnect or do something – you know, offline.

There’s two ways to think about life and participating in it. One way to look at it is emotionally – how does it feel each time I participate? Is it a negative experience or a positive experience? Somewhere in-between? The other is by results. What are the outcomes of my participation? Do I have a richer social life? A more successful business venture?

On the emotional ledger for using Facebook, I definitely found it to be a mixed bag. I’ve evolved in how I use it. I used to use it because it was new and cool, and frequently it was a place to promote myself or to vent. Then the service evolved and everyone was self-promoting or venting.

Facebook is ego-centric.

I have come to learn that I derive the most value from moments of giving and receiving from the heart. The ego is the wrong place. It’s where our judgments live. Our shoulds and shouldn’ts. Our insecurities and dreams. Our disconnect with the world and each other. Time and again I find myself back on Facebook spending time in this space and it seldom, if ever, fills my cup. So why do I keep doing it?

On the results ledger, I would say that my time with Facebook has been mixed. I have successfully maintained relationships with people in different parts of the world that I would otherwise never maintain interactions with. Those tend to center around shared interests and collaboration. The heart finds its way in there. But is Facebook really the only tool for maintaining those connections? I don’t know yet.

The business results have their own story. At first, fan and business pages on Facebook were a productive way to reach an audience. Once people Liked your page, anything you shared would be seen by your followers. But over time people got tired of being bombarded with promotions and Facebook made it much more difficult to reach anyone.

They made a change where most page posts wouldn’t be seen by anyone. Unless you paid to Boost each message. I paid once to advertise to people so that they would like my page and be able to see my offerings and then FB bait/switched and I was left with fans I couldn’t reach. Suddenly my cost of acquisition moved from a one-time expense to a continuous expense.

Plus, people don’t connect deeply with 99% of the content that crosses their feed. Facebook isn’t designed for deep, single-tasked, authentic interactions. It’s designed to stimulate and feed addictive behavior characteristics. Including my own addictive behavior.

So now I’m left in withdrawal. I think about Facebook regularly. Like when I quit coffee and replaced the habit with drinking tea, I need something to fill the void. Or I think I do. The impulses keep firing. My hope is that I will substitute the resulting behavior of using Facebook with something more heart-centered.

I think about the people I’ve “left behind” and wonder how and when those connections will reestablish. One thing I know is that any that do will be deeper, single-tasked and authentic.

I miss my “friends” but I don’t miss Facebook. I’ve cut the first cord, but I’m still dangling in the service’s orbit. Still, I think it’s a step in the right direction.