One week ago today I deleted my Facebook account as a gift to myself. I must be honest and say I was a bit apprehensive about going through with deleting my account—permanently deleting my account. I had been building up to the idea for months.
So I’ve had 2 questions about it.
1. How did you go about doing it? and
2. How do you now feel after deleting it?
The Process I Used
Deleting your Facebook account isn’t as simple and as straightforward as you might think. I read a number of articles about how to do it. I even watched a couple of YouTube videos about how to do it. And when I deleted mine, I carefully documented the 8 steps I went through. It wasn’t all that difficult, but it was time-consuming. The complete process took me about 5 hours, but I probably went overboard to be sure absolutely everything I could delete was deleted.
Here are the 8 steps covered in my video walk-through:
1. Spring Cleaning (0m.42s)
2. Check to See if My Data Was Given to Cambridge Analytica in the Data Breach (2m.38s)
3. Download Account Archive (3m:54s)
4. Deactivate Messenger (6m.09s)
5. Deactivate Third Party Apps (6m.31s)
6. Permanently Delete the Account (8m.03s)
7. Delete the Facebook Family of Apps on All Devices (9m.22s)
8. Delete Cookies and Caches on All Devices (9m.53s)
Links mentioned in the video:
Data Breach Link
Mashable 2013 Article
Here’s the video itself:
So How Does It Feel to Be Off Facebook
The truth is, I’ve had no “withdrawal symptoms” at all from leaving the platform. But, honestly, I’ve been insanely busy since the day I deleted my account. I’ve had no time to think about it really.
Have I been more productive than usual not having an account? Probably. Significantly? Probably not.
I honestly think I’ll be happier in the long term, though. I won’t have to go through another election cycle smothered in the Facebook imbroglio. I’m seeing fewer advertisements for sure. I’m seeing no memes. And I haven’t gone down a single rabbit hole about which I can do absolutely nothing but fret, vent outrage, and worry—all accomplishing nothing positive, only compromising my serenity.
Life is good. So far, it’s thumbs up.
BTW: Even if you decide to stay on Facebook, watching the video section entitled Spring Cleaning would be well worth your time. I highly recommend everyone clean up their Facebook account. I was fascinated by that part of the process!