What It’s Like To Leave Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp
By: Neville Lahiru
Tags: Technology, Social Media, Internet, Digital Marketing, Facebook

What It’s Like To Leave Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

I should have done it sooner

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Ah yes. The Zuckerberg empire. It’s one that many of us can’t seem to evade. Facebook products have been so deeply embedded in our daily digital lives that depriving yourself of using any of these may feel like going back to the stone age. At least that’s what I thought at first.

Over a decade ago, social media was still in its infancy. Global internet adoption was growing. Platforms like Facebook were fun places to be on back then. Sure, it made connecting with friends and family more convenient. But more importantly, Facebook back then made wasting time on the internet entertaining.

Over the years, the appeal clearly started to grow. Furthermore, smartphones became affordable, the internet became cheaper and faster. The technology grew and so did the adoption on a global scale. By 2012, Facebook over a billion users, Twitter had over 500 million, Instagram had 30 million (before Facebook acquisition), and LinkedIn over 140 million. A year later, WhatsApp reported 250 million monthly users. Clearly social media was picking up and was fast becoming a vital component of our daily lives.

The convenience factor played a major role in this regard. For example, it was cheaper and faster to text via WhatsApp than send an SMS. It was easier to check your Facebook newsfeed to check what your friend has been up to than say, call them. Following news and other important events became easier on Twitter and Facebook’s newsfeed. These apps soon became so ingrained into our habits that now it’s almost impossible to find people who aren’t looking at the phones all the time. For a long time, I was one of these people, until I wasn’t.

The communication and convenience conundrum

One of the biggest arguments for keeping yourself on platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp is the fact that it offers a convenient means of keeping in touch with your friends and family. If it weren’t for WhatsApp you might not be able to talk to some of them. Without Facebook, you might not know what’s going on with your friend’s life.

Image by Alfredo Rivera from Pixabay

Social media has indeed made some things easier for us. This is particularly true for WhatsApp. In my case, it wasn’t just friends and family, but professional contacts as well. Yes, I understand there are so many tools available. But here in this part of the world, WhatsApp is the most convenient option since everybody is on there. Also, it's cost-effective and casual enough to maintain a healthy professional relationship. Furthermore, it doesn’t stop with clients, even internal communications get tricky without something like WhatsApp.

I work as a writer and a digital marketer. Whenever I need to get an article published, quick communication helps to expedite the approval process. In my case, it’s a matter of sending a Google doc/Word doc link of my article to my editor, a few quick messages here and there, finalize it and schedule for publication. There’s a lot of this happening every day and so quick communication is vital. It’s the same for digital marketing activities, where it’s a matter of clients being able to reach me for quick updates. WhatsApp fills the gap perfectly.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Therefore, WhatsApp is often an obvious choice for business communications. Cutting yourself off WhatsApp means you lose out professionally in terms of maintaining convenient internal communications and building a good rapport with your clients.

But even so, I feel the cons have far outweighed the pros. Take WhatsApp. Right now, almost everyone uses the app. As a result, you’re bombarded with so many messages every day. Particularly from those groups. I was on over 15 WhatsApp workgroups. Add friends and family groups into the mix and your phone is filled with text messages, GIFs, memes, photos, and videos by the hundreds. Suddenly, this convenient messaging app is a daily nightmare. That’s not even considering that one friend in your contact list who keeps sharing dubious claims with everyone.

Facebook is objectively worse. No longer is it a productive space. The newsfeed is filled with people hellbent on proving their followers that their lives are glamourous. All the albums, the proud moments, and whatnot. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Then there are always those pointless heated debates in the Facebook comments. There always seems to be one. It could be about a movie, a political statement, or even a simple scientific fact. Everything is up for debate on Facebook and hardly any of them are productive. Yes, there is a mute option. But that’s like substituting beer for whiskey because you have alcohol problems. Plus, this is merely scratching the surface.

Going from bad to worse; its Facebook’s fault

Facebook’s disappointing history of protecting users’ data has been its biggest bane. To make matters worse, the platform enabled the mass distribution of hate speech, fake news, and misinformation. From Cambridge Analytica to accusations on interfering with the US presidential election 2016, Facebook has been the epicenter of many controversies.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

At the heart of all this lies Facebook’s need to dominate the digital space and capitalize on its massive advertising power. All the inaction and the unenthusiastic approach towards fixing these problems are fuelled by this need. Look no further than the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. But what’s worse is that you and I are enabling this one way or the other.

You may ask, “Wait, I’m not into any of those things. So how am I enabling?” Simply put, all those Facebook likes and all the Instagram stories feed into the numbers. As long as users keep engaging regardless of what sort of content lives on Facebook products, the platform will thrive in its controversial ways. After all, the more users are immersed in its features the more ways Zuckerberg will find to sell you adverts. Facebook newsfeed, instant articles, Instagram stories, Messenger, are all advertising spaces in case you haven’t noticed.

Bidding adieu to Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram

Between the constant WhatsApp group spamming and the many Facebook controversies, I felt it was time I removed myself from the Zuckerberg empire. Like many, social media was a core part of my daily routine. So, it wasn’t easy by any measure. But as a starting point, I deleted the Facebook app from my phone. A week or so later I proceeded to permanently delete my Facebook account. By around January 2019, I was on Facebook no more.

It took a few weeks for me to adjust to not unlocking the phone screen every 10 minutes to open the Facebook app or keep a Facebook tab open on the computer browser. But I was already feeling a significant shift in my habits soon enough. I felt more at peace knowing that I won’t be too bothered with all the negativity on Facebook. Most importantly, I saved precious time and energy. In fact, just one and a half months after leaving Facebook I managed to finish reading three books.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

However, I did continue to be on Instagram and WhatsApp. It was easier for me to leave Facebook than the other two. Instagram for example has been a very productive space for me. I found content around photography to be fascinating on the platform. Between the @visualsofjulius image manipulations to crispy clear photographs by @petermckinnon, Instagram served me well as creative inspiration. WhatsApp, even though its hell to navigate your way around the many conversations it was still the only way to keep in touch with some of my friends and relatives.

As much as I wanted to leave all Facebook products, it felt a little counterproductive to remove myself from Instagram and WhatsApp. Then a couple of months ago I came across Indi Samarajiva’s story. I thought to myself maybe I could give it a try. Unlike Indi, I never substituted my smartphone for a dumbphone. But I did eventually make the leap. Last June, I deleted WhatsApp and Instagram too.

It might have taken a week or two for people to notice my disappearance. Nobody really noticed I was gone from Facebook. Neither did people on Instagram. But once you’re off WhatsApp next moment all hell breaks loose. Family members think something’s up. Professional connections assume they’ve offended you in some way. Friends’ alarms go off. In short, you’re either going through something serious or you’re dead. Those are the only two valid reasons why anyone would go off WhatsApp apparently.

Living without Facebook

Though I didn’t see it at first, leaving Facebook products puts you in a far better place than you think. I started being in touch with people more than I used to. My communication took the form of phone calls, SMS, Telegram, Google Hangout chats, and Twitter DMs. Instead of thousand-odd things blasted at your face, now it was only a select few that you kept talking to regularly. Reminds me of the pre-social media era.

But to be fair, my attempt at giving Zuckerberg the middle finger has not been perfect. See, I’ve been working as a digital marketer and a tech journalist for years. So, logging into Facebook and monitoring the platform was an important part of my professional career. Maintaining a social media presence for my clients was still vital. I couldn’t let my personal motivations dictate my professional responsibilities.

Reluctantly, I had to create a new Facebook profile just for the purpose of managing Facebook pages. For a little over a year, I’ve had a dummy Facebook account. The only activity was posting content on a few Facebook pages. I have no friends on my account, my newsfeed is empty, and I follow no pages. Although ever since I started writing on Medium I’ve opted to share my articles on a few Facebook groups. Now I use the dummy account solely for the purpose of sharing my articles on Medium-focused Facebook groups.

Even WhatsApp proved to be a far more difficult task. While I did find alternatives to sending WhatsApp messages, it was near impossible to keep in touch with everyone I wanted to. For example, I have friends and relatives living in Australia. The only convenient way for me to reach them is via WhatsApp only. Additionally, even local contacts would sometimes prove difficult. I’ve found the hard way that people are more likely to check their WhatsApp messages than an SMS. As such, I had to come back on WhatsApp for a brief period out of necessity.

So, yes. I’ve left Zuckerberg’s empire for the most part. My only current activity being sharing Medium articles on a couple of Facebook groups. Living without Facebook or Instagram in your daily habits was not a walk in the park. But over time you get used to its absence as you divert your time and energy towards other things. For me personally, the only thing I find challenging is not having WhatsApp. But I’m starting to enjoy the peace of mind far too much. So there’s that.

Then again, I’m not in the minority

You might think that being out of social media makes you the odd one out. In reality, there are almost 4 billion (3.95b) people who aren’t on social media. That’s about 51% of the world’s population. Now, there are many reasons why this is so and it’s not always choice that keeps people away. For example, in Sri Lanka where I live, only 47% of the population, which is roughly 10.1 million, have access to the internet. Although, if you take households with children this number is at 34% according to one report.

Photo by Aneta Pawlik on Unsplash

In that sense, perhaps it’s time to rethink how we prioritize our digital lives. The internet may very well be a utility at this point. But social media is a luxury, a want than a need. We think social media is important because we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that it’s a core component of our social structures. My own mother, who wasn’t on any social media channels for a long time got on Facebook about a year ago. Like many, she started using Facebook as an effective means of keeping in touch with her old friends and relatives. After all, you can see most of your daily life in the digital space.

But as time went by, the newsfeed and its algorithm started doing its thing. My mother started coming across misinformation in the guise of memes and seemingly legitimate news. Of course, she didn’t take things to heart. But one can notice how daily behavioral patterns change thanks to Facebook.

The cost of being on Facebook is too high

We crave instant gratification. We want to see more likes on our photos. We want to see people engage with the content we share. Furthermore, our dependency on these apps for our daily operations makes it near impossible to let them go. Take China, for example, the country is heavily dependent on WeChat, not just for communication. But for eCommerce in general. Thereby, tightening the company’s grip with the userbase further.

Facebook understands this and it will do everything in its power to amplify this need in people. For instance, the tech giant is already pushing payments on WhatsApp.

The tech giant already claims ownership for the top two popular messaging platforms in the world [Image credits: datareportal]

In essence, everything about Facebook has turned into an addiction. This addictive drug is hard to get rid of. But once you do, you leave yourself more time in your hands to engage in productive things to do.

My point is, leaving Facebook is probably for the best. But it's understandable that not everybody is in a position to do so. But for me, it's about the much-needed peace of mind and avoiding the cesspool of the internet than anything else. After all, the cost of being a Facebook customer is a far higher price than I’m prepared to pay.