omg…this sounds like me. I was realizing what a burden Facebook seemed to be in my life and I deactivated it around 2 or 3 months ago.
I haven’t taken the full step of deleting it though. But the longer I’m away from it, the less I feel the inclination to go back on.
It feels like a relief and it’s hard to put into words why.

I mentioned to a friend once about how annoyed and stressed I felt regarding people’s posts. One person does nothing but complain, another does nothing but brag, others can be downright mean, but even the ones who seem like bags of sunshine didn’t seem to elevate the mood. And I think one of the things that started getting to me is that it was basically people saying the same exact thing every day…and some posting so many times a day, as if in bids for constant attention and approval. And I started not liking myself for thinking not very nice things about so many people every day!!! I feel that Facebook really promotes the habit of looking outside instead of looking inward.

So, in the end, this relief I feel at not being involved in it anymore is such a positive! But FB is so insidious in our culture now. I had deactivated my account a while ago and during the process of applying to a job online I had to reactivate it because this company wanted everyone to be on a lot of social networking sites. I don’t do Twitter or Vine or any others so I thought I had better reactivate my FB. I never heard back regarding that job app and so a couple of months later I deactivated it again. This time for good.

I really see no need to ever go back. But back to the friend I was telling about how FB made me feel stressed and anxious and she said that I shouldn’t take things so personally. Which, I guess is good advice. And , to be honest, there are some things about it that I will miss. I made new friends, reconnected with long lost friends but for me the negative outweighed the positive. And I know I made the right decision because I feel good, inside, not being there anymore. I can’t even tell you how many times people will tell me about being upset regarding a post someone wrote. You are right, it instigates a lot of problems in real life that probably would not exist if it were not for FB. I also agree that it does replace actual, real social interaction between people and so many regard FB interactions as adequate.

I agree with you that in the beginning, when it was just for college students it was probably the best and served a noble purpose. It’s now become nothing more than a tool to feed the narcissist within.

I think that the only reason I haven’t gotten rid of it entirely is because it seems as if not having a FB page is something that society has labeled ‘anti-social’…like something is wrong with you if you don’t have it. So I guess if I keep it deactivated for long enough I will get to the point where I can just take that final step. But for now, I’m just really happy to be away from it. ^-^

Alexxandra

Hey liam,
Personally I’m not into the whole social networking thing anyways, I feel like it can bring a lot of negative emotions and fake ones as well. You see other people and think their lives are just so perfect and start comparing it to yours. And no matter how hard you try you still do it subconsciously, “don’t compare your insides to other peoples outsides” . I feel like being “too close” to my friends is never healthy that way we have nothing to talk about when we are together other than , what this person posted or what that person posted, plus I like to have a little mystery in all my relationships as well as leaving my social world for REAL life cuz with me I really enjoy being alone anyway. also So many fake accounts go up everyday as well starting all kinds of bullying and issues for people, so in my opinion as a fresh new start for you , I would delete the facebook, I just think it does bring a lot of negative emotions into our life and can frustrate us so why not just get rid of it? If there is someone you need to keep contact with there is always skype where you can only talk to people when you need to 🙂

I have my FB but had to do a spring cleaning and wiped out people who I thought were being negative , jealous , catty, etc. I don’t have time for that non sense as a 31 married woman I have learned that people who care about your happiness will be there and will only want the best for you. Do not waste your time on negative people who don’t have anything nice to say. Why be around that ? Be around people who lift you up ! If you haven’t yet , listen to Dr. Wayne Dyer and read Pastor Rick Warrens book ” purpose driven life ” I always talk about these two people cause they know what there talking about and it’s about life! Hope that helps keep your head strong and don’t take anyone’s crap either ! ( I guess I am kinda a tough cookie)

I used to have a Facebook profile back when I was at university.

For me, it’s just one big forum of upmanship – the impression I got was of people trying to out-do each other with photos and details of their lives, trying to tell everybody else how much fun a person is having, how they are going to all the parties, what they have etc. Needing validation from other people about these things, and chasing status with their statuses!

And it is very hypocritical of me to criticize all of the above-mentioned because I was guilty of the exact same thing too. At school I felt inferior to my classmates (I was bullied) but when I signed up to Facebook many years later I started adding my old classmates to my friends list (or they found me) – I got a lot of photo comments from them saying things like “OMG You’ve changed so much you look so cool now!” – I felt validated and it felt good to not feel like the person they had made me feel like back at school. It almost turned into an addiction – trying to out-do other people, trying to find acceptance and worth with how many likes my post had. Looking back now, I just looked and came across like a complete idiot.

But most of the time I was always worried about people leaving mean comments on my photos or my wall – this feeling of dread got worse when I didn’t log in for at least a week. Thoughts of “Oh no, somebody is probably leaving really horrible things on my wall” or “Oh no, somebody has probably uploaded the photos from when I was drunk the other night and I looked like an absolute prat” or “Oh no, I’m never going to get the job I applied for because they have probably looked me up on Facebook and saw my posts and photos of me being stupid…”

Facebook probably does have it’s uses – you can stay in touch with people you are unable to see regularly in real life but besides this, I think it’s making people more antisocial. People don’t talk in real life or ask how we are doing because we already know, thanks to their Facebook status. But most of the time it used to annoy me when somebody on my friends list who I had never even spoken to in real life used to post how much she couldn’t wait to watch some silly reality TV show, or when my old housemates used to congregate in the living room with their laptops just talking about what people have posted. It’s also very easy for people to cyber-bully and target somebody with abuse (I saw this quite a lot online at uni) and I think shaming and abusing somebody online when other people can read all about it is low and disgusting.

Long story short, I deleted my account. I feel so much better for it. I will probably sign up again soon because I need to promote my artwork but I’m not doing personal social media again. No thanks!

Hello there!
I don’t know what you may feel but I JUST HATE FACEBOOK! If I ever felt so bad in my life, that’s just because of fb. I joined fb Four years ago. I was kind of nervous to talk to people by that time. But socialising with unknown people helped me up with being open and coming out of shyness. It did help me but most of the time I got in trouble with people over there who were totally unknown to me. Facebook isn’t bad or anything. But the people using it scare the hell out of me. I got addicted to it so deeply when I began using fb, I always thought about the people I met in fb. All that was on my mind was facebook. It was like, I gave importance to the people over internet instead of the person sitting right next to me. Being so dissolved into it. I got in a lot of troubles. I met wrong people, talked to them and took them too deep into my mind and stuff like that. It totally changed my mind and everything. I was always used to feel somewhat stressed and something like that and I didn’t know why. I even did few mistakes which didn’t even involve my real life. I still do feel hurt and regret over it. There are so many times I asked myself why did I even make a mistake of using facebook? My life was really smooth but everything began collapsing when I took those people on facebook so deeply. I stopped enjoying the things around, in the shorter way I stopped being what I was. Everything got changed.
I began blaming myself and one day I took a break and questioned myself what was the reason for all these and every reason pointed at facebook. Then, I made a firm decision. I was in pain and figured out why. The people on facebook made my life worse, yet taught me great lessons which I would never forget in my life. I decided to stop it all. I deactivated my fb account one month ago. I stopped thinking about the people on facebook. I told myself strictly that I would never ever gonna get back and if I get a chance I would surely delete the account itself. Now I feel so happy. I’ve become the person I used to be. I enjoy with the person sitting next to me. I’ve started all my good habits again. I observe people. I watch the animals and enjoy the way they behave. I read books. I go out. I’m really happy. I feel so proud of myself for leaving that social network and I proudly say that I’m no more into it. I realised that I’m not a worst person as the people over facebook told me. I haven’t done any single mistake I did in facebook. If there’s anything I feel proud about myself is I set myself free from something which kept on hurting and crushing me. I’m just telling my opinion and experience about facebook, if hurt anybody I’M SORRY!
Thank you!