Whether you are frustrated with how facebook is affecting you psychologically, the increased involvement the changes in facebook are asking of you, or simply find it has become unmanageable as social networking tool, there are many reasons why some users are leaving facebook. Here is an overview of some of the exigence for this recent online exodus:
Changes to format:
There have been many changes that have been made or will be made to the facebook experience. One major change anticipated is the timeline feature. The new timeline proposes to show information from the time of your birth. Supposedly, your facebook will be able to trace back to all your posts you have ever written. And you will be able to upload personal and private information from before you ever were on facebook to complete this timeline. If you want facebook to become more like a “this is your life” experience you share with others, then the timeline makes a lot of sense. You might learn much more about your friends on facebook and they might be interested to learn more about you. But if social networking is something you want to be a casual experience, this change might not be welcomed. It is hard enough to manage all the information people already share on facebook (and there’s an argument to be made about people sharing too much information on the Internet already), much less the information about their “real lives” prior to the web experience. It appears intimacy is the desired effect (or at least option) of facebook with the timeline experience–something people might not want to use facebook, or any social networking, for.
It’s a burden:
Facebook is offering more controls via privacy in terms of what information you give out to who, possibly allowing users to limit how much they share with certain people about that timeline. But that involves an extra level of filtering–something people might not want to spend the time to do. The changes facebook is making to their social networking site involves more information sharing–in theory this sounds good, but in practice, according to one user thinking about leaving facebook, ” Emotionally, it has also become burdensome. You end up seeing things you didn’t want to see. Knowing things you didn’t want to know.” The increased amount of information you have access to as a facebook user can become overwhelming.
Of course, one of the added benefits (or side effects) of sharing so much on facebook, according to another user , is that is increases engagement and commitment to the site:
” A site that has your entire life is the stickiest thing you will ever touch. It will own you. You will not be able to leave it. Right now, people are leaving Facebook. If it is just “social”, it might pass. If it is your life, it is going to stay. Facebook is you. You are Facebook.”
Casual users might not want to make such a commitment to a social networking site. Especially a site whose business model makes money off of the data you provide–a capitalist Big Brother, if you will.
The psychological toll:
Even if you are comfortable with the data mining aspect of facebook and plan to be careful in what information you give out (and perhaps figure that having your data mined is the acceptable cost of using this service), you might not like the psychological consequences. According to Dave Herring, facebook is a barrier to having a healthy private life already. Dave writes in his own blog , ” We have become narcissistic people and I think it’s largely due to Facebook.”
As one former user suggests , facebook feeds on this narcissism and actually provides a block to true intimacy. Her solution was to take a break from all social media, including facebook:
I feel impressed to leave my comfort zone
{behind this screen}
and share in the lives of those around me.
I want to be face to face with you.
I want to have you to my home to hear what’s going on in your life
and to share what’s going on in mine.
I want to meet my neighbors in person.
I want FACE time with people.
There’s something better out there:
Others are turning to other social media sites to fill the void of facebook, such as Google plus. According to one new user to Google+, the new site allows users to easily filter information to various “circles” of different people instead of mass spamming all of your friends. This is true of the facebook experience as well, but the format of Google makes the filtering process more “intuitive” and “streamlined.” As another user argues, ” I don’t always want to share the same thing with my buddy from college as I would my parents or my niece.” For some users leaving facebook, Google plus is seen as a great way to control your personal information and be selective about what information you give out to different people.
If you are contemplating leaving facebook, you might be interested in checking out a few facebook pages/groups/events having to do with this possible exodus (note–you need to still have facebook access to see these pages!):
The Idea of Leaving Facebook Entirely
Bring Back The Old Facebook Or I’m Leaving
Official Leaving Facebook Day