Do you regret deleting FB or IG or any social media?

It's been a few years now, don't miss it at all.

Since rejoining, I've had many nice experiences catching up with people based on their Instagram or Snapchat stories, or being in Facebook Messenger group chats, something I would not have spontaneously been able to do had it not been for these platforms.

What I miss the most is getting birthday reminders and event invites. What I miss the least is the negative feelings social media gave me about my life and the world more broadly.

What I have found is my connections with the people I keep in touch with is much deeper because I don’t let a “like” replace a true interaction. I am intentional about adding birthdays to my calendar now and once my friends realized I wasn’t hearing about events, they made sure to let me know.

I highly recommend it. Both platforms allow you to recover your account within a time frame so it’s kind of a no lose situation if you want to try it out. One recommendation before you do: make sure you download all of your pictures, videos, etc… first.

I sincerely hope you do this and wish you the best of luck if you do.

Edit: lowercased an AND and deleted and incomplete sentence

It still holds up 3 years later.

It was annoying that some dating sites required it I recall though so do consider that.

You're not wrong, there was a time when Facebook was an essential utility. I made heavy use of events, for example. That time has passed.

You should just deactivate it today. You can always reactivate if you regret it so there's no downside, but I think you'll be shocked how little you miss it.

I don't know about becoming more productive, but it's worth leaving because it's primary function these days is to waste your time and give you nothing in exchange.

Google is the next big privacy ignorer that is in my radar. The only Google product I depend on is Chrome and I am considering options to de-google my life.

So, my advice is delete FB and don't look back. You will appreciate the time you get back on your hands.

Keeping in touch with family is pretty easy through calls/texts.

By the time I got rid of facebook, my feed was just full of spam and hot takes from people I didn't really interact with IRL anymore.

No regrets, however, other people using social media by the very fact that they have me as their contact had affected me adversley. Maybe there is a need for a privacy credit score thing to block people that allow anti-privacy apps to use their contacts and messaging history.

For the most part, I think my life is better without it. On the other hand, it really sucks not having access to FB marketplace.

One guy I met on the train told me he was a fan (I have fans?!) and asked why I didn't post on FB anymore. I kept IG alive and noticed a lot of people I used to talk to but never did anymore.

So I reactivated FB. Comments on everything on FB is still fucking toxic, probably worse than say, 4chan. I love reading comments (hence HN) but opening comments on FB is a very bad idea. A lot of people are also toxic; sole purpose is to sell something (often a political opinion or "personal branding"). So they're generally not interested in you or the conversation, only interested in looking good.

My wife told me to keep the FB active, just unfriend everyone except her. Not a terrible idea.

Trying to unfriend about 90% of friends now, down to Dunbar's number. And remove most followed pages. It becomes clearer who matters and which pages/groups matter.

I can find enough stupidity at the local pub, thank you very much!

After a few years, I'm left with just my elderly relatives on Facebook Portal (a great device that they can use) and ~5 friends that I actually care about but can't persuade to use Signal.