Bye Bye Facebook

I have always had a love / hate relationship with social media. I’ve always had a slightly forced relationship with anything terribly social for that matter. On one hand I relish privacy and a quiet life and in the same breath I am deeply curious about people, trends, communication and the world around me. Which is why, I suppose, I write a blog (social) yet live in the countryside (not very social).

I wasn’t one of the first to join Facebook but I did fall for the powers of Twitter in the very early days. I tired of Pinterest much more quickly than I thought I would but I absolutely adore Instagram and think it is winning as my front runner in the social media race. Obviously I like blogging but that comes from a love of writing and a love of magazines and the printed word. I’m not sure it’s down to a love of being social….although I admit that I do certainly consider who might read my posts before, whilst and after I’ve posted them, but I do try desperately not to let it stop me. It comes more from a desire to share what I think might be interesting or useful or perhaps strike a cord with any like minded people. It allows me to be my own editor of my own magazine.

Anyway, for the past few months I’ve started to really dis-like Facebook. It was beginning to take up too much time – mainly because I manage 5 different company “Pages” – and whilst I was posting work related things, I couldn’t help but get sucked in to the News Feed. Some of the “status updates” and photos and news posts were interesting but they always became tangled amongst the “friends of friends” who I really didn’t need or want to know about. Also, Facebook trips people up all the time. Little white lies or innocent misunderstandings get completely out of control and it just stops being fun. No one can really be themselves. Plus, if I was to see one more status asking to copy and paste Facebook’s new privacy settings, I think I might have screamed. Whilst being hugely important, it also just kept reminding me over and over again that nothing on the internet is private. Nothing. So if you want to be private, posting your life on Facebook isn’t the way to do it, however many boxes you tick.

So I did it. I cancelled my Facebook account. Mel Burridge married to Jay Jay Burridge is no longer. Instead I have an alter ego who shall manage my company pages (I agree completely to the importance of Facebook for businesses) but she shall have no friends, photos or walls on which to post. It feels very good indeed. Lets just see how many friends remember my birthday.