Howefamily

I have just done it and it feels really weird. I have been thinking it through for months now and I was almost scared to do it. Now I feel odd, 10 years of wasting my time on in and I think I need a week without it and then I will see.
I am so sick and tired of passive agressive memes. I would actually just love to get rid of most people but that would offend everyone so its easier to just deactivate it all.
Wish me luck. Anyone else done this? How did you get on?

christmasoompa

It's such a useful tool for me for keeping in touch with friends and family all around the world and seeing what they're up to, how their kids are growing up, etc, that I don't think I could.

But I am quite ruthless, I don't accept many friends requests (my rule is if I wouldn't send them a Christmas card or have a cup of tea with them, they aren't my FB friend!) and the minute anybody puts anything political on their feed (particularly if they support Britain First, Brexit or Trump) I either block their posts (so I don't have to see anything they've posted, but they don't know) or unfriend them.

Howefamily

Maybe if I return to it I will do that too.

caretaker

When it started up I was on Facebook for 1 day and started getting messages from people I didn't know and shut it down right then.

Danny B

I deactivated in 2011 and haven't looked back. The first few weeks were hard, and then I discovered reddit.

Siouxie

I'm much the same - I have mine locked down so unless I give you a direct link to my FB profile you will never find me. I keep mine very private - I share little, I write and post little; my photos are set to specific people and nobody is allowed to 'tag' me. I don't 'do' friend requests or the suggested 'people you might know' - if a friend has their page set to allow anyone to see their friends or their posts are set to public or 'friends of friends' then I tend to limit any interaction with them down even further... or suggest to them they might want to tighten up their FB preferences for privacy.

I use it mainly to keep in touch with family and friends who are spread throughout the world... it allows me to see glimpses of their lives... and to 'talk' to my sisters in real time via messenger video.

However, if someone hasn't contacted me in more than 2 years I quietly drop them. After the stroke and my birthday came and went without a single comment from a few people, I decided if they didn't care enough to wish me well then I didn't need them around any longer.. and quietly unfriended them.

I tend to unfollow many - particularly those who post endless photos of what they have eaten / cooked complete with the 'oh aren't I amazing' type of comments and the recipe I don't mind once in a while but a couple of family members in the UK were posting every single meal, plus desserts / cakes - every singel day. Too much! Those that share endless stupidities are also unfollowed - why do some people feel that everyone will be interested in 6 memes or 'inspirational quotes' or similar that they saw at 4am which is meaningless to the rest of us?

I do find that FB Purity is very handy for keeping a lot of FB's crap off your page https://www.fbpurity.com/
For anyone who gets messages or requests out of the blue and wants it to stop - it's ALL down to your FB privacy settings

scrubbedexpat091

I dont even see posts from people on my friends list, I interact with them so infrequently. I see mostly my aquarium groups, and other groups I belong to that migrated away from forums and onto FB.

You can also unfollow people so you dont see their posts but they remain on your list so no weird, why did you remove me questions.

I rarely add anyone to mine, dont add co-workers, dont add managers, dont add random people off the internet etc. I also use a variation of my name but not my real name so unless you know what name I am using, I am hard to find. No picture of me on FB, profile pic is generic. I dont want potential or current employers to have the ability to find me. I dont put in my city location, phone or anything like that.

beckiwoo

scrubbedexpat091

I find FB was more useful once the "friends" are silenced...lol

BristolUK

Never had an account but I saw the occasional page for prospective tenants and I occasionally look up people from my past and their FB pages come up.

The number of 'friends' some people have

Maybe I should sign up for the satisfaction of unfriending people. Take that, moron.

I always enjoyed writing letters and getting them back. So email does that now.

Partially discharged

This seems like a lot of work etc for a social media site that is supposed to help you keep in contact.

A week or so ago, I was at my footie teams post game debrief (i.e pints at the local pub) and the topic of Facebook came up (after we'd talked about Brexit, Alan Partridge, the ability to start your car in 3rd gear, best method of cross country skiing, best ratio of IBU's to $, why do so many people in Vermont drive Subaru's. Basically of the 12 of us (all over 35) and generally middle class white collar guys with backgrounds from the UK, Canada, Nepal, Italy, and Korea, only one has a Facebook account that he uses. Most found it be too intrusive, and digging up people we'd forgotten about etc. If I haven't thought about a person since high school there was a reason for it.

My wife has an account and she shows me pictures my brother posts etc but to me the signal to noise ratio is too high.

I've purged people from my Linkedin account who post drivel or too much.

I prefer to just send photos and updates via email or via an actual one on one conversation etc to those nearest and dearest rather than the 'look at me, I"m wonderful' persona of most Facebook postings.

The takeup on Facebook by tweens is declining but they are becoming adopters of Snapchat and Twitter which make Facebook look deep.

Siouxie

Not at all. I work in Social Media - if you know what you are doing it takes a couple of minutes to set up your preferences and privacy settings.. once set, they can be left.

I am 'friends with' and keep in contact with those I wish to have contact with, rather than the hundreds of complete strangers or minor acquaintances that many millennials seem to have as 'friends' on FB - I don't need people to look me up, I'm perfectly content with those I already have

Each to their own. It serves it's purpose for many.

Tangram

^^^^^ This 1000x. Did it myself years ago due to the posts seemingly seeking self congratulation and oh poor you, tpogther with you look awesome

magnumpi

dbd33

I like facebook well enough, I derive mild amusement from it and that's enough for me. I could do without the adverts for neo-fascist groups but, I suppose, it's mildly interesting to see what the cradles are up to. I do find it a bit odd that so many people prepare a post and then put it on both facebook and Instagram, the audience can't be that different and it's twice the faff, but hey-ho, it's a free-ish country they don't try to make me do it.

"Deactivating" seems a bit odd too. If you're not interested just don't go into it. I manage to do that with physical places of worship and websites about trains almost every day without it being worthy of announcement.