I Want to Quit Facebook and I Don’t Know How

I want to quit Facebook, but Facebook has wedged itself into my day-to-day with the grim determination of a candiru.

You will deeply regret image-searching “candiru.”

I’m thoroughly dissatisfied with my experience in the app, but I’m not entirely sure I can stop using it. To my first point, I’m probably addicted — Not in a cutesy way, like the way I’m addicted to the Indian food place next door (although I am considering stealing your television to afford more takeout this month). No, ‘addicted’ probably in the actual, realistic definition of the word. I continually check it even though its the same-ish 4 or 5 news stories and 2–4 opinion pieces. I continue scrolling as Facebook algorithmically dredges up boring variations of the same click-pattern I’ve established. I barely see posts from friends and family anymore. I sigh. I close Facebook. And then I check it again.

The time between varies; it can be a few hours or a couple of minutes but rarely is there anything new or worth noticing. Why then, do I still check? Command-T has become reflexive when I hit a stutter-step at any point of my day-to-day. Facebook is chief, but hardly the sole destination. Other sites I visit with unsettling consistency include Vox, The Verge, The A.V. Club and BBC’s World News site. I’ll pull up Twitter once or twice a day.

Even as I’ve tried writing this, I’ve pulled 15–20 tabs up. This is probably, barely 400 words so far.

I’ve uninstalled every social app from my phone (Instagram not included. I don’t really have much of a problem with Instagram and still enjoy taking and posting photos somewhat regularly). I even bought a cheap phone specifically because I wanted to have limits on the supercomputer in my pants pocket. I’ve set as many outside limiters on myself as possible without exercising any kind of self control and the results still aren’t satisfactory.

The point I’m making (badly) is that I feel very…fragmented. Whatever small things I want to accomplish this year, they seem extremely distant with what little discipline I have. Any point of agitation, silence, or boredom is a trigger to consume. Ultimately, my goal is to just to have my default resting state be one of mindful stillness. I want to satisfy my curiosity without being a slave to it.

So how does stoicism work in the internet era? I have no idea. Another website or application probably isn’t the answer. Social Network business models are structured around keeping you engaged as often and as long as possible. If you don’t pay for the service, your needs aren’t the priority so much as your engagement. I know you probably know this, I’m just typing out loud. Even killing 90% of the content and connections from my Facebook feed isn’t the answer; Snippet digests rarely give me the full picture and don’t satisfyingly express what you’ve been up to in a satisfying way. Plus the way social networks have been structured is to surface a queasy cocktail of advertising and best-ofs content pieces; Facebook’s best guess at what will most likely engage me. I don’t get the details, just highlights.

I don’t really know, but I think a sabbatical is at least in order. Deactivating Facebook, uninstalling Tweetdeck, and setting my phone mostly to airplane mode. For a couple of months, I want to make stillness my goal, and just see where that lands me. I wrote in my 2014 review that I wanted 2015 to be about focus, execution and finishing. This is a key piece of that, I think.

The only problem is, I like you. And I like talking with you. This isn’t being broadly generous. The odds are good that, if you clicked on the link I posted and made it this far, you’re one of the people I would sincerely miss if I quit Facebook/the internet permanently. So if you want to keep up with me, let’s grab coffee. Let’s talk about what things are important to you right now.* And if that’s not feasible, geographically speaking, drop me a line. I should have plenty of time to respond here in a bit. And in a couple of months, I’ll come back up for air and we’ll do a post-mortem to see what went right, wrong and sideways.

Cheers and catch you on the flip-side.