Farewell, Facebook, at least until Nov. 4

I paused my Facebook account because I am tired of the hatred and fake news that is posted there. You can call me “triggered” but I argue I am less inclined to be such without this branch of social media …or any social media, for that matter (lest we forget that Facebook owns Instagram.)

The amount of stupidity, conspiracy theories, and straight out lies on Facebook are the reason I have pulled that trigger. Couple those aspects along with the political ads (most of which are lies regardless of party) and the perfect storm of contentious quarreling is formed…and nobody gains from that.

Take for instance my father and me. We do not agree on almost anything politically and likely never will. He shares memes on his social media sometimes that are out and out lies. I would sometimes try to slow the puffery and disinformation by adding facts to the argument, but at the end of the day, he believes what he believes, and I obviously have different thoughts. That is fine, disagreement and conversation are a good thing...but doing so on social media, I believe, are not. In fact, I think it is unhealthy.

A 2016 Danish study entitled “The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being” claims “It was demonstrated that taking a break from Facebook has positive effects on the two dimensions of well-being: our life satisfaction increases and our emotions become more positive.” The year 2020 has been a royal cluster of chaos and absurdity. If 2020 was a food, it would be a rice cake covered in sand. Add people viciously attacking each other on Facebook over differences of opinions and that sand-covered rice cake is dipped in cat pee.

Not for me.

Last Wednesday morning I deactivated my Facebook account and it will stay that way until at least November 4, 2020. (Go vote for crying out loud.)

Why should you care?

You should not.

But if you feel like you also need a break from that website, here’s a bit of info for you:

“To deactivate your account:

Click in the top right of Facebook.

Select Settings & Privacy > Settings.

Click Your Facebook Information in the left column.

Click Deactivation and Deletion.

Choose Deactivate Account, then click Continue to Account Deactivation and follow the instructions to confirm.”

Maybe it will help your mental state. Maybe it won’t. At the end of the day, I have never left a Facebook argument and thought to myself “You know, that really changed my opinion.”

Not once.

Never-ever, ever.

Be well, Facebook friends, and be kind to one another.