“Be different. Just press confirm. You will still be a real person if you delete your Facebook.” These were my thoughts 7 weeks ago as I made this “life-altering” decision. I first created my Facebook when I was 14. I was about to enter high school and thought it would be a great time to make an account. Six years, 3 months and 2 days later, I no longer have an activated Facebook account. When I tell people that I have deleted my account, they stare at me in disbelief and say, “How do you live?” Despite their shock, I continue to live, and with a surprisingly very active social life. However, I used to love Facebook. There were many things that I would always look forward to, such as seeing a friend post a new photo album of our crazy shenanigans from that weekend.
However, I started to realize that my relationship with Facebook had become unhealthy. I would sign onto Facebook and look at pictures of my friends abroad and envy their social lives or vacations to Europe. I would constantly refresh my homepage hoping that someone had posted on my wall. It had become an addiction. Facebook allowed me to access information that I would never otherwise have if I wasn’t a close friend to that person. This fact was beginning to seem creepy to me, and eventually led to my decision to deactivate. I’ll admit Facebook has become the epicenter of our generation. When there is a party, guests are invited through Facebook; when it’s a friend’s birthday, people are notified through Facebook. Yet I started to realize that many people who are avid users of Facebook were just using it as a form of validation. They believed that their excessive amount of “friends” and pictures proved their social status. I had hoped that deleting my Facebook would be cleansing, and in a sense, it was. I now have a different approach when meeting people, when I am out with friends, and when I am experiencing new things. I feel freer, and able to actually enjoy the circumstance that I am in for what it is, not what it will look like later online. All in all, being Facebook-less is not a disgraceful act within society, nor is it essential to being a connected in the 21stcentury. For me, it was a huge weight lifted off my virtual shoulders.