I'm Quitting Facebook

I'm quitting Facebook.

And I'd like to share with you some of the reasons why.

I think an important place is to start by acknowledging that Facebook has brought so much good to my life: sharing the joys of new motherhood; my sobriety and mental health journeys; and videos of my husband’s incredible dance moves -those always seem to be the biggest hit.

And then there’s all of you - I love to see all of you and your beautiful lives, your pets, your travels, and your children.

I love what I have learned on Facebook. There’s been a whole lot of that as well.

But over the years I have become increasingly aware of the problematic nature of this platform. And it’s caused me to ask myself at what cost am I willing to stay here?

I once listened to a podcast that discussed privacy policies and terms & conditions, which we all nonchalantly agree to with every app we download. The guest shared that his team wanted to better understand what it would take to actually complete their due diligence as a consumer, and read through the entire Terms and Conditions of a random app. They chose Angry Birds.

The printed document was nine hundred pages long.

NINE HUNDRED.

For Angry Birds.

And then they went on to actually read it (in its entirety) on a live stream. It took them (insert drum role here….): 31 hours, 49 minutes, and 11 seconds. For an app that takes a single second to click ‘agree’ to.

For the record: Angry Birds is not unique. This is true for just about every app we download to our phones.

I have lived most of my life believing that relationships should be give and take. It has become increasingly clear to me throughout the years what a lack of reciprocity exists in my relationship with Facebook (and any other platform where this exists).

I have given countless free information about myself (most often without even being aware of doing so): my age, my gender, what I’m interested in so that it can, in turn, be sold to a third party and monetized. Our personal data is currently estimated to be more valuable than oil. And that isn’t hyperbole.

Every click, every like, every pause matters.

But even more important than the economic value of my data, is the value of my dignity.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that it isn’t something I am willing to freely give to a company that is morally bankrupt and offers zero benevolence in return.

Which leads me to my next point: the issue of democracy and Facebook's blatant disregard for it.

Our democracy is so incredibly fragile at this exact moment in time. And I can’t help but feel that with every tap of the Facebook app, I am contributing to the chiseling away of what’s left of it.

I remember in early 2018 when I first learned about Cambridge Analytica. I was horrified by the magnitude of their influence on the 2016 election, and then Brexit in 2017. In 2019 I watched The Great Hack, which further documented how monumentally impactful Cambridge Analytica’s involvement had been in both.

I was sickened.

And then I did what we do.

I hopped onto Facebook to talk about how horrible Facebook was.

Over the past few years I have continued to turn a blind eye, in spite of being completely aware of Facebook’s violation and continuous breaches of my privacy; its lack of responsibility for foreign interference in our election (and the approximately EIGHTY SEVEN MILLION users whose data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica); my knowledge of the negative social/emotional/mental implications it has on countless individuals; and even knowing that they are responsible for the most rampant spread of misinformation in the history of the world.

In his documentary, Good Trouble, John Lewis said that our democracy was hanging on by a thread and that he intended to fight for it until his last breath. How dare I not carry the torch?

I’ve always just sort of thought of Facebook as free. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that the moral cost is immeasurable.

One day I’m sure we will look back on social media with the same level of horror we do that our parents smoked in the car, with the windows up. We will look back with the 20/20 clarity that hindsight always seems to offer, and be astonished by the catastrophic social demise that we casually said yes to.

Yes, there will be many wonderful memories.

But we will also reflect on that tipping point when we knew (and we knew that we knew) better.

I don’t pretend to think that deactivating my account will solve my problems and suddenly make me more noble or virtuous. This is definitely a journey of harm-reduction. Maybe one day soon I’ll quit Amazon and Instagram, too. But leaving Facebook definitely feels like a giant leap in the right direction.

Anyone interested in joining me?