My Facebook Detox

This week marks 3 months of me being clean…of Facebook.

While it didn’t start out as resolution, I deactivated my Facebook account shortly after Christmas time. It is with a huge sigh of relief that I can honestly say  I have broken the addiction. Facebook is no longer a part of my social media sphere and I don’t foresee there being any reason in the future why I would reactivate my account. I will admit to allowing myself a few “cheat” days when my roommate let me log into her account, but those cheat days were actually a good thing. They showed me that I wasn’t missing anything.

For those of you who have thought about deactivating, or tried and found yourself logging back on, here is a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of my Facebook purge.

Cons:

• Not being in contact with distant family. This is by far the worst con for me. Seeing pictures of  and occasionally talking to my family states away are things I gave up when I decided to deactivate my account. 
• No more birthday notifications. It’s a lot easier to be a “good friend” when you have Facebook to remind you about birthdays.
• “But I have all these cute pictures I want to post!” Yeah, it really sucks when you have 30+ awesomely cute pics from your recent trip to the beach and you  have to choose just one to Instagram. I remind myself that I took the pictures for my own memories, not so my 600-something cyber friends can have a chance to “like” it.

Pros: 

• I am way less of a creep. I have no shame in admitting that I was often guilty of hard-core Facebook stalking. If you say  you’ve never done it, you’re lying. Stalking ex-boyfriends and frenemies is ALWAYS a waste of time, and deactivating my Facebook account has stopped me from this neurotic habit.
• Less wasted time. DUH!  Everyone knows Facebook is the ultimate time suck. While I now focus much more of my wasted time on Twitter or Pinterest, the overall time wasted has decreased.
  
• I don’t have 99% of my life cataloged online. Depending on how you feel about social media presence and privacy, this could be a con. For me it is a pro. By not having a Facebook presence, I have one less platform I have to worry about when applying for jobs and the like.
• No more babies! Or engagements or gross PDA pictures to look at. I don’t think I need to explain why this is a major victory.

Has anyone else out there felt the freedom of deactivating their account for good? What are your Facebook pros and cons?

UPDATE 7/17/2013: It’s now been about 8 months with no Facebook. I have officially broken the addiction! Now it’s just a matter of whether I should reactivate my account for professional reasons. Decisions, decisions!

UPDATE 11/9/2013: Ugh. I have been forced to reactivate my account for academic reasons after making it almost a year without one. I have to say, my detest for Facebook has only grown.