I deleted Facebook, and I really don't miss it

After the barrage of wedding posts, it was the presidential election. Donald Trump’s victory was the catalyst for plenty of people to reduce Facebook use, NPR reports, and for good reason. Millions of people were upset, and it seemed like they all turned to their favorite easy-access megaphone: Facebook.

It’s exhausting to read the same opinions over and over, and still feel helpless about the state of our country. Sometimes I would come across well-articulated opinions that I agreed with on Facebook, voicing concerns and supplying action items. But those almost always got lost in the sea of shouted statuses and rambling blame-game posts.

The last straw was my time sailing by as I got pulled by the latest Betsy DeVos scandal or the engagement of someone I went to middle school with. It just seemed like such a trivial thing to let take up my time.

I already read the news. I’ve already seen the Betsy DeVos commentary — did I need to read 18 more half-baked opinions on Facebook? And while maybe I wouldn’t hear about my middle school friend expecting a baby without Facebook, did I really need that information? Do I need to keep up with lives of people I haven’t spoken to in years?

Looking at it from a cost-benefit perspective, Facebook was costing me a lot of time with virtually no benefit.

Speaking of the cost-benefit equation, Facebook wasn’t helping my work-from-home productivity at all.

My day is completely autonomous, but I still need to fit eight or nine hours of work in. And the reality of being freelance is if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. An hour I spend on Facebook is an hour I can’t bill for.

I don’t have a formula for how much my productivity has increased since being off Facebook, but I’m positive my career is benefiting.

At my worst points, I was checking Facebook every 20 minutes or so. It seemed like the reward for getting anything done at all was going on Facebook for five minutes. Twenty minutes of work followed by five minutes of Facebook wasn’t really a ratio that was helping my work performance. And for me, it seemed like the easiest way to mitigate this was to cut Facebook off cold turkey.

Instead of plainly deleting my Facebook, I had my boyfriend change my password, so I can never get on. I’ve been 90% off Facebook since the election (meaning I checked it once every two weeks) and 100% off for the last six months.

I have no clue what’s happening on Facebook, and it is liberating. I’m not living some kind of cloistered existence — I still have Instagram. But honestly, being off Facebook has helped me regulate my Instagram use, so that it’s no longer eating up my day.

I really only have good things to say about being off Facebook. You don’t really realize how much time you waste on Facebook until you quit. And once you’ve been off it for a while, you start to see how much you don’t miss it.

Other than the fact that I now wish everyone happy birthday a week late, there’s really no downside.