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Leaving Facebook has honestly made me a happier guy. (I left my account active, but I've removed the apps from my phone and I only visit the site about once every three months to message someone my phone number.)

Browsing the site always made me a bit angry (at the politics) and a bit sad (because someone else always seems to be on some impressive vacation). Then I'd close the browser be angry at myself for wasting time I could have invested in learning something or creating something.

My #1 fear was that I'd feel out of the loop, but I honestly don't. I've yet to have anyone mention something with a "didn't you see that on Facebook?" A friend of mine tried the same experiment and says he's also happier. If you catch yourself left with a bit of pensive sadness after using the site, try taking a hiatus and see how it feels.

3 comments

> I've yet to have anyone mention something with a "didn't you see that on Facebook?"

Any chance this is because you don't know what you've missed, and hence you don't talk to people about them?

Anecdotal, but the only time I've ever hear that phrase in the past 3 years is for my college meme group (one of the few reasons I am still on Facebook). As far as I know, nothing happens on Facebook for anyone under 25. As you get older, life event announcements are about the only thing I can imagine would be useful.

Maybe it's just my friend group, but absolutely everything is scheduled and planned through Facebook events. I basically don't visit, I use Social Fixer to trim down the news feed when I do, but Events is invaluable.

Yeah, I think it's just a matter of social circles. For me, events exist on Facebook, but plenty of people get invited off of Facebook, and the events are private so there's no discovery aspect you'd get in your news feed. I get told in person about most parties or events before seeing an invite on Facebook.

I do like and use events on Facebook, but I wish it was any other service at this point. It's all about the network effect though, it doesn't matter how many better options there are if no one has an account there.

It's used a surprising amount for academic discussion in my field, especially more informal stuff like which conferences to submit to or follow-ups to recent controversies. Basically the discussions that 10 years ago would've happened on a mailing list, or in the comments on a prominent person's blog. Some of that also happens on Twitter, but a somewhat different subset of discussions go there.

Does it matter? If he's still keeping in touch with the friends & family that he truly cares about, then anything he "misses" probably wasn't important enough for those people to mention to him in person / text / chat / on the phone / whatever.

And if it wasn't important enough to mention, why care about it?

I never read status updates as I only use messenger/messenger.com. I'd like to ditch that too, but I have a lot of friends who I only have in messenger and who literally live on the other side of the planet. I suppose I should just make international txts instead.

I sympathize, but there are two problems:

1. Events. For discovering events, there really is no good substitute to seeing where other people are going. I often get good event suggestions from Facebook through distant friends who would never invite me in real life.

2. Groups. For discussing stuff related to hobbies, people often use Facebook groups. E.g. a painting class, where people post their work, and post things like "let's visit this gallery tomorrow morning" or "there's a masterclass this weekend, who joins?".