Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

Keeping up with it is a full-time job and I already have one.

Exclusivity. Facebook feels a lot like eating a burger at McDonald's. It's just not that great.

I shut down my facebook account about two years ago.

I did it because I can't figure out why I should spend time reading something that no one cares whether I read or not.

Since I left, I noticed something. I think the word 'poser' has been overused and turned into a bizarre cliche, but surely there is a lot of posturing on facebook. I think the I-know-you-knows are a lot of the appeal, and that element is certainly lost with IM/Email. Personal tastes vary, and spending a lot of time on cheap social signals seems to be a pretty human passtime, but I just don't enjoy it.

I have a facebook account, but I don't use it anymore.

I hate to see how awesome other people's life seems. I can't stop but get envious and disappointed. Yet, I kept coming back for more. I had the unhealthy compulsion to keep scrolling through the happy stuff, while feeling bad for my "mundane" living.

I stopped using facebook. I feel much better.

It made me feel sad. FOMO and all that. At the end of the day, I just didn't like who I was after using it. I'm a happier person without it.

I'm trying to avoid Facebook as much as possible. Partly because it cuts into productivity. (The "rabbit hole" effect, where a few seconds of reading a blurb lead to a longer article or video...)

But I also do believe the gist of that study which claimed that people feel more depressed after using Facebook. If you're craving human contact, visiting Facebook is a temporary distraction at best -- and the second you leave, you're no better off than you were before. In fact you probably feel worse, because now that temporary distraction is also suddenly gone....

Closed my account a while ago. Now using Diaspora* and quite happy with the result.

Lack of meaningful connections.

Also, I don't want to participate in their facial recognition database. I find this to be the worst in terms of the privacy I give up because I can be tagged in a picture without ever posting a thing. Anonymity goes away once anyone can identify anyone else through a simple picture. Then they can see who you work for, where you live, your family life, your sexual orientation, political beliefs, and so on. The downward spiral goes on from there.

Here's a number of reasons why I (like the author) am not on Facebook anymore (permanently deleted account 2 years ago):

http://saintsal.com/facebook/

Was never on.

Never had an account. I just don't really care what my former classmates and associates are up to. Friends know my cell # and email.

Lots of noise, and very little signal.

For every interesting announcement from a friend, I had to wade through weeks of "What NATO country are you most like?" results, past their expiry memes, political grandstanding, videos of puppies and people falling over, and endless pictures of food. There's just no compelling use-case I can see.

After being an user from 2007 I've deleted my account in February 2013, then re-registered in October 2013. It doesn't contain any private data now, only close circle of friends and acquaintances and is primarily used as a contact holder/event responder.

It might be a generational thing, maturity or otherwise, but IMHO Facebook (and other social networks) has impacted our lives in unhealthy ways, more then being useful. Specially since businesses and everyone came on it (parents, relatives). This switched it from a cool place to hangout to some serious business.

Those two articles explain it more: http://seersuckermag.com/opinion/read/facebook-isnt-giving-b...

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-facebook-makes-us...

It is boring.

I occasionally use it as a way to contact someone if I don't have their current email or phone number though.

So I still keep my account but I post a picture or status update roughly biannually.

Never joined.

Facebook has too much central control.

Social networking should be based on a decentralized system of independent nodes such that no single authority owns the whole damn thing and makes everyone obey their rules, and has everyone's personal info. (And all protocols documented, and implementations open-sourced, needless to say).

I haven't deleted my account, I've just stopped using it. I log in and check it out every month or two, but never stay for very long.

I don't use it because I don't find it very interesting. If I care what's going on with someone, I usually keep in touch via other means. And even for those people, I don't find their day-to-day posts very interesting.

Also, when there is something I need to know posted on Facebook that I haven't heard about via other means, my wife usually fills me in.

I deactivated my account. It's still around, of course, and I can log in again when I want. But I didn't want the distraction anymore. I found that checking the feed on my phone became an automatic habit for no observable benefit. I don't mind so much the whole privacy thing, because I don't think Facebook is that evil. Your information is public somewhere, and you're being tracked by someone, whether you like it or not. And this happens outside of the internet -- it's how business works. So it's not a big deal to me.

The usefulness of Facebook is a big deal though. And it's just not useful anymore. My friend group tends to be pretty selective, and is mostly made up of people I know and interact with in real life. So I do that instead.

I just slowly trailed off using it. I wish I could say something more defined like other posters in this thread, but I just stopped. I first just never logged in on my computer (I think I may have Firefox private browsing and Do Not Track to thank for this since I had to enter my password every time I wanted to go on rather than just hit the URL). It wasn't as interesting at work for a quick break as Hacker News or USA Today, etc. I still had it on my phone and would look at it when I was waiting for the bus, sitting at a restaurant waiting for someone, or in the washroom. But then I started using Twitter and Instagram. All the news that I was interested in was on Twitter, and all the pictures of friends I wanted to see were on Instagram. So all that was left on Facebook was articles form Buzzfeed and ads. One day I realized that it was just taking up space on my phone's home screen. I deleted it so I could move Slack and Snapchat up to the first screen. I still like Facebook Messenger, and keep that app on my phone. Its good to always have <i>something</i> to get in touch with friends with (especially when traveling). The irony is that I deleted WhatsApp so I could move Messenger up to my phone's home screen. So Facebook and Facebook-owned companies are sort of replacing themselves for me.

Using it less and less. It has just become like everything else: always trying to get your attention.

Jealousy, for the most part.

Now that I've stopped using it I find that I'm in a better, more stable mood throughout the day. Not being reminded of my inferiority means I find I can concentrate better on self-improvement i.e. the things I should be doing if I want to be as successful as these people I'm so jealous of.

I've deleted my account completely.

Time is a finite resource. What is the most economical way to spend it? Watching The Shawshank Redemption is probably more economical than reading Facebook memes. And similarly, there are hundreds of other things you could do at any given moment with more entertainment value than Facebook.

Now, you could say, "facebook is not entertaining, but is useful". I do not find Facebook useful. If you're interested in networking benefits, there's LinkedIn and email[1]. If there is no answer you can give to the question "Why are you on Facebook?", then you should probably not use it (I'm assuming it has a very low entertainment value for you, which may or may not be true).

"because everyone else is on it".. is not a good enough answer for me. Therefore, I deleted my account completely.

[1] EDIT: and instant messaging.

Deleted permanently. It isn't interesting anymore, unless you enjoy only seeing posts that involve mundane bs mixed with advertising. Sad how it went from being an exclusive university friends only joke to a "serious enough to apply for employment with" joke of a site that everybody's grandmother uses regularly.

It's a junkheap of human banality -- deleted my account many moons ago.

I just don't like it. It's a big boring time sink. My friends who I actually care about what they have going on in their lives, I just talk to them the people did "back in the old days". I do however still have a Facebook account so my friends can tag me in whatever thing they have going on, but I don't install the app on my phone, nor do I log into the website, and I have everything setup to not send me any type of notifications

As a Web developer and Internet Citizen (TM), I can't wait for Facebook to complete their AOL-ification, which will surely include its eventual death spiral.

Rage-deleted my account after getting tired of being constantly presented with reminders of parts of my life that should have been moved-on-from, except Facebook decides what parts of your life you should be seeing.

If Facebook hadn't steamrolled Evite due to the sheer percentage of general population with accounts, I don't think I'd have any regrets whatsoever. People have to go out of their way to invite me to things, which has definitely had an effect on my specific social network.