In May 2007 I signed up a Facebook account as I saw a bunch
of my schoolmates on the site. During that time I was close to graduating from
high school and all of us knew that separation was inevitable. So I got a
Facebook account because I saw it a good way to keep in touch when we part our
ways, I even got in touch with my schoolmates from middle school and elementary
school. Overtime as I felt Facebook became popular and a part of society so did
a lot of the baggage that came with it. I started to feel that Facebook as
being a job I did not get paid for. It started to feel like I had some
obligation for the friends I had on there. I no longer saw the site as a way to
keep in touch with the people I went to school with. In April of 2017 I got rid
of my Facebook account, not just deactivate I mean actually deleting my
Facebook account. Facebook is quite addictive I took me a lot to go through
with deleting Facebook. I wanted to get rid of Facebook long before April 2017,
but there was a part of me wanting to stay. For years it has come to my mind
about what if some of my friends miss me after I leave Facebook. Facebook does
try to make you stay with them. When we deactivate our account Facebook tell us
by picking a list of our friends on there that these friends will miss us.
Deleting Facebook is also a process not that obvious. I had to look up on
Youtube to see how I can delete my account. When the delete process starts
there is a two week waiting period, if we sign in during that two week period
we can cancel the deletion process. On Facebook it is physically easier to
delete your own family members as a friend than it is to delete Facebook
itself.
Deleting Facebook was not an easy task for me, I took steps
before hand to try to limit the withdrawal effects as much as possible. I
started by limiting my activity and usage on Facebook, then I deactivated my
Facebook for a while and I started to the process of deleting Facebook. Even
taken these steps after I deleted Facebook I cancelled a couple times and then
I finally completed the deletion process. I felt the sign of relief after
almost ten years on Facebook. Now I can focus on more things outside of the
online world.
I felt Facebook has changed the role of some people's original
purpose of signing up in the first place. For people who use the site to keep
in touch with their friends, the majority of that can be done outside of
Facebook. Most friends that people are close to will have each other's Email
address, phone number or cell phone number to keep in touch. The majority of
time Facebook is used is not really to keep in touch with your friends, a
survey has shown before people are more likely to use Facebook to look at their
Facebook friends profile than to keep in touch with the friends they know. Now
I quit Facebook and got over the withdrawals I feel more free to do other
things. I am now relieved that I no longer feel obligated to go on and try to
maintain what's going on the social network site.
