Bye bye facebook and instagram: Why I deleted my social media accounts

You might have noticed that my facebook and instagram pages, both the business and personal pages, do not exist anymore.

What has happened?

During the last weeks and months, I became increasingly frustrated with the flood of posts in my newsfeed. At some point, I felt that the majority of news was either straight "fake news" or citing from unreliable sources or referring to polarized discussions. Of course I still enjoyed reading the updates from my real friends. But it got more time consuming finding those posts I really wanted to see as my news feed was getting just useless. And then I started to waste even more time, by reading some posts which were suggested in the newsfeed, which led to more posts again....

I told myself that at least having a business page is worth the time and it should be maintained well. I tried to post updates, shared useful information, and also run some ad campaigns. When analyzing the traffic, I remarked that without paid posts, only very few users were even able to see my posts. Getting new followers seemed very difficult unless a considerable amount is put in ads.

Despite the frustration, I found myself spending continuously more of my valuable time with social media. Maybe I friend is posting something exciting, maybe I find some interesting news, maybe I get some more likes and reactions...

The last nail in the coffin of my social media activity finally brought the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma". Although I was aware of many issues already before, it made me think whether I want to be part of this. Whether I want to be "the product" and let myself be manipulated. Being an engineer myself, I was impressed by the openness by which some former developers of the big social media companies are speaking out their concerns, but I was also shocked by the ignorance of the problems by the companies and the officials. Privacy protection and protection of the children and teens are simply ignored, as the business interest behind is too big.

So all those factors made me decide to "opt-out" of those media. Instead, I am again staying in touch with my friends and business colleagues the old-fashioned way by writing them an email or having a phone call. This is more enjoyable and more personable. And I have even more time left, which I can use for writing blog pots more often.

I am not against technology in general and I know that many huge improvements and amenities we are enjoying nowadays are enabled by the use of technology and internet communication. But without some regulation and privacy protection, this system might get out of control - controlling its users at the end.