About three months ago I deactivated my Facebook account. I did it mainly because I was tired of endless flow of insignificant information and advertising. For another thing, I found myself spending too much time there and I was wondering: what if I stop doing it? What if I spend all this time on important things? Would anything change?

I belong to those who often overanalyse things, so I have been thinking a lot about what caused me to deactivate Facebook aside from tiredness. Here are three reasons why I decided to deactivate my account.

1. I want to create, not to consume

Social networking is a very time-consuming thing. When I was growing up there was no such word as “procrastination”. For now Google has 4 billion results for plain “procrastination” and 3.3 billion for “how to fight procrastination”. I couldn’t remember when it started but I found myself struggling against procrastination for the last 3, maybe 4, years. Maybe it started even earlier, but it doesn’t matter now. What really matters is an enormous quantity of useless information which has passed through my head, incredible amount of time I have spent starring at the screen and some consequences of this habit, which definitely includes short attention span and problems with concentration. Creativity demands time — you need a plenty of time to think, to research, to try. It is also demands free space inside your head and lots of attention which now I am wasting on consumption of useless information about other people’s lives.

2. I am tired of advertising and paid content

A decade ago companies have occupied television with their commercials. Today, when youngsters don’t watch TV anymore, brands come to the Internet. This time things are much worse because of new understanding of privacy. Social networks have discovered how to make profit of personal information we share, so now you see personalised context advertising everywhere — in your mailbox, news feed, in you smartphone. If they could broadcast it directly in our heads, they would. I am tired of it; I do not want to see it and I do not want to pay with my attention for the ability to talk to my friends (and crowds of complete strangers).

3. I want my personal life to be personal

We share too much personal information: places we have visited, things we have liked, our interests, photos, habits, our personal connections and so much more. Maybe sharing itself isn’t bad, but how do you know what Facebook or Google does with this information and who else has access to it? Can you foresee the influence this information will exert on your future? More and more employers look through candidate’s social profiles to make sure he or she is a suitable employee. I don’t want employers judge me for my personal life but for my skills and experience.

Frankly, Facebook is not so bad. It is great, actually. Humanity now has an amazing tool to exchange information of all kinds, to solve social problems together, to spread ideas, even to conduct revolutions, not to mention staying in touch with relatives and friends. The world has never been so connected as it is now;

Facebook is great. Of course, if you can control yourself and spend very few time there. I can’t. I cannot be and occasional user. I react every notification I receive and dive deep into News Feed. And I am not happy with that.
So I decided to deactivate Facebook completely and see what’s going to happen.

Three months later after deactivation

Two years ago The Verge conducted an experiment. Paul Miller, their columnist, decided to spend a whole year without internet — no Skype, e-mail, Google, Facebook, smartphone, no nothing. His main reason was pretty much the same: he was wasting time instead of doing something meaningful. He found himself pretty far away from a man he wanted to be, doing nothing to became one. On April 30, 2012 at 0:00 he unplugged the cable and changed his smartphone to a dumb one.

A year later he wrote an extensive report about the whole experience. He came to a very tough conclusion: the reason was himself, not the Internet. Few months later after the beginning of the experiment Paul found himself more focused and less exposed to distractions. Few months more he found himself just about in the same position he was before the beginning of the experiment: unmotivated, indifferent, unfocused and lazy.