Well, friends and neighbors. I did it. I deleted my social media accounts.
Back in the day, I held out joining Facebook longer than most people in my peer group, but shortly after starting this blog and shortly before moving to North Carolina some years ago, I caved. I didn't join Twitter until a few years back, long after most people had jumped on that bandwagon, and though at the height of my usage, I was on Facebook quite regularly (certainly for close to an hour a day, probably a great deal more), I never took to the firehose that is Twitter.
Something like three years ago, I had my wife change my Facebook and Twitter passwords and keep them a secret. It effectively killed Twitter for me. I didn't log back in until yesterday when I had her type the password in so I could delete my account. Facebook I'd have her log me into occasionally to see if I missed anything. Spoiler: I never did. Soon the time between logins was stretching out. What was a once weekly check became once monthly became once every two months or so. Buoyed by deleting my Twitter account, I had her log me into Facebook today. I had the intention of either temporarily deactivating my account and/or doing some serious housekeeping with regard to whom I was friends with and followed. The latter seemed like too much work. The former seemed a silly half-step. So instead, I deleted my account.
This was a long time coming. I won't go into it here, but there is a serious mountain of evidence that social media is bad—bad for you, bad for others, bad for society. I'd encourage everyone to do research on the topic. It's really pretty stunning.
I'd hoped to feel relieved or triumphant about deleting my social media presence, and to an extent, I do. But honestly, those "services" are so vapid, so devoid of anything meaningful, I hardly miss them at all.
