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Thinking of deleting FB account but.....


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I have been thinking about deleting my FB account but I get a lot of encouragement and such from certain pages. But I spend a lot of time on there that I'd rather break free from. BUT I get info and encouragement there that I wouldn't get other places. But...... and so it goes.

Any advice?

Maybe if I unlike pages and unfriend people I don't really interact with. Hmmm. I don't know. :confused1:

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I agree with cutting back. I went to my settings and clicked to only get important stuff from my friends---not all the shares, likes, games they played, etc. I also have just a few friends compaired to most. I also have 4 groups that I am following but I have to click on teh group to see the posts. That way I don't have to wade through tons and tons of posts to find updates from my friends.

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Here's what I did: I unfriended all friends (except my two sisters and my son). I don't post any status updates myself. I don't use it at all to read up on what people are doing or to keep people generally informed about my life. Instead I used it for groups and messaging only. I joined groups that I'm involved with (3 local swap groups, 3 homeschooling groups, 1 group related to my direct sales business) and use the messaging like email. If I "like" a page, I immediately "hide" it so it's updates don't show up in my feed. This has all helped me tremendously.

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Rather than unfriend people, you can just hide them. That way you won't see their statuses and they won't know that you are not really following them anymore. And you can always go back later and view them again if you change your mind. If you click on a friend's name, there is a box on their page that says "Friends." Hover over that, then uncheck "Show in News Feed." Or you can decide to see "Only important' stuff under settings. I did this a lot around the election, and some I've gone back in so I can see their posts again. Others, I don't miss. :)

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I had a facebook break last year then when I came back to it I deleted pretty much everyone except real friends. I've gained a few more since from a course I was on but generally it's a more pleasant place to be and the news feed is quieter. The people I have added are much more positive. I still delete and unfriend on a regular basis, if I repeatedly find what they are saying annoying then I get rid of them.

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Here's what I did: I unfriended all friends (except my two sisters and my son). I don't post any status updates myself. I don't use it at all to read up on what people are doing or to keep people generally informed about my life. Instead I used it for groups and messaging only. I joined groups that I'm involved with (3 local swap groups, 3 homeschooling groups, 1 group related to my direct sales business) and use the messaging like email. If I "like" a page, I immediately "hide" it so it's updates don't show up in my feed. This has all helped me tremendously.

 

 

 

This is pretty much what I do, although I do have several friends who are not family--distant friends who I keep in touch with occasionally and old school friends. I found that when I start browsing people's pages I get sucked into it. Now I just use it for local groups. It is handy, but I don't want to go overboard on time spent on it.

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Rather than unfriend people, you can just hide them.

 

 

Yes, you're right, that's an option, too. It wasn't enough of a break for me. I needed to make FB not about "friends," but about being a tool that I use in a certain way (groups and messaging). I didn't want to think about how many friends I had nor to think about accepting or denying friendship requests anymore.

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The easiest way to find out if it's the right choice is to just dump it. You don't owe anyone or anything a single reason for it either. Just turn it off and walk away.

 

Find another avenue of information you enjoy and perks you up. Start some magazine subscriptions, get the newspaper in paper format...anything really.

 

After some time, if you don't miss it, then you know you have made the right choice.

 

It's really very interesting to me how people are paying and profiting off the idea of leaving it alone or making it inaccessible. It's a cultural idea that is very new, but where that leads to in say, twenty years is a little freaky.

 

You have to pay a fee to not be wired?

 

William Gibson (father of cyberpunk novels) wrote about this sort of thing twenty years ago as a fiction futurist. He may have been dead on instinctively.

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What *I* did was to set up my account (btw, after originally deleting, not just deactivating) so that I had NOONE friended. That allows me to join groups or read interesting public pages for information; but not deal with keeping up with friends and family. I do not have anyone friended and have a message saying that though I appreciate the relationship with them in real life, I don't friend anyone. I also say they are welcome to PM me. Amazingly, I've still gotten MANY friend requests. But I just decline and if asked about it, I just say that that is not how I use fb.

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I have been thinking about deleting my FB account but I get a lot of encouragement and such from certain pages. But I spend a lot of time on there that I'd rather break free from. BUT I get info and encouragement there that I wouldn't get other places. But...... and so it goes.

Any advice?

Maybe if I unlike pages and unfriend people I don't really interact with. Hmmm. I don't know. :confused1:

 

 

The reasons you give can be easily remedied by removing all but the encouraging entities from your news feed. If the problem is that you have no willpower when it comes to Internet usage, removing FB may just mean you spend more time elsewhere online. What specific problem do you want to solve.

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I think part of it is the "illusion" of community. I don't have a lot of IRL friends or community so I look for it online. Going through FB posts on pages like hs'ing groups and magazines make me feel part of something. So I sit and read things even if they don't apply to me right now. Does that make sense?

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