Breaking Up With Facebook: It's not You. It's Me.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 8:54PM Every once in awhile, a friend of mine stops using Facebook. I never considered breaking up with Facebook until my cousin Kevin did. One of his reasons was that worrying about Facebook takes up too much of his "mental real-estate." Although he was more concerned about issues of privacy when he recently made the break, I have become empathetic with how he feels about his relationship with this social network.
I have been spending too much mental energy concerned with how I share content that I create online and not enough energy creating valuable content. I have decided to leave Facebook. My rationale for breaking up with Facebook can divided into two concerns: agency and value.
Agency:
My first concern with Facebook is with who controls the user-created content on the site. I don't know who controls the content that is shared on Facebook. Not knowing who makes backups of my content, how I can access out-of-date information, how I can share my content more broadly, and how I can move or repurpose the content is no longer acceptable to me. If I spend energy to create a piece of content (art), I feel that it is necessary for me to be in complete control of that piece of art.
After spending several hours gathering, organizing, and backing up our family photo library, I have realized that because I have relied on someone else to curate much of my work, I have lost track of some great art. There is no easy way to backup, revisit, or move content that has been posted to Facebook. It is because of these types of difficulties, that I have been hesitant to join the fastest growing social network Instagram. Instagram is popular because it helps the user create and share art. The problem is that control of the art is relinquished to the service upon publication.
The wonder of the "read-write web" (web 2.0) is the democratization of publication. Because I run my own blog site, publishing content can be done under my own agency. I can control, through time, my work. I can back it up, I can move it, I can repurpose it. One day, I will be able to deliver all of my creation to my grandchildren if they want to read it. That is because I curate my own content. Who can say if my work published on Facebook will even be available two generations from now?
Because I pay for my own publication space, I can make every decision about the presentation of my work including the decision not to subject my audience to advertisements. When using Facebook or other social services, an agreement is made that the service may use the art against which to advertise. When I publish to Facebook, I give them permission to advertise to my friends using my art. If I expect friends to leave a comment, I ask them to sacrifice a small piece of their own agency.
I can no longer accept this relationship.
My blog site is run under a creative commons copyright license agreement. That means that all of my work can be shared freely with others. The only stipulations on this type of license is that shared work requires attribution. If someone would like to use my work to make money, they need my written permission. This type of license is the opposite of the licensing that I agree to when publishing to Facebook. When I publish to my blog, I maintain the agency for that work.
Content value:
An argument can be made that posts published on Facebook are not "art." Some may say that I am over thinking my relationship with a social network. My response to that line of thought would be that all published content should have value. Some content is definitely worth more than others but why would I bother publishing content that has no value?
I mean no disrespect to any of my Facebook friends, but I have not read very much content on that particular social network that is well thought out or crafted. For the most part, users of Facebook do not take time to consider the audience, or purpose for their writing. I am not really that interested in reading writing that doesn't make those considerations.
As a teacher who focuses on both writing and technology, I become a little depressed about the way that students think about the Internet. To them, the Internet is Facebook. They don't often consider the Internet as a place to go to read or write work of quality. The types of reading and writing that they do online, generally speaking, has very little value other than making social connections (which is admittedly very important to teenagers).
One of my professional goals is to have students practice online writing that is more purposeful, considers an audience, and is more developed. As a means to this end, I run my own course blog site. Through this project, I hope to illustrate to students that their content is valuable. I help them maintain agency by curating their work which is also published under the creative commons license. I have come to realize that creating content with value and which maintains agency is just as important for me personally as it is professionally.
Breaking with Facebook is a move away from the position that writing online is not valuable or at least not valuable enough to protect. That line of thinking is not good enough for me anymore. I care about the work that I publish and I care about the people who read it. That is why I am going to focus the energy that I would otherwise spend on Facebook publishing to my blog. It is easy to subscribe to my work via "rss" or on Twitter: @ljangler.
Lou 
Reader Comments (4)
some great points here, i'm seriously considering deleting mine now.
Hi Lou,
On the first of the year I went on Sabbatical from Facebook. I have not deleted it, and I doubt that I will, but I felt I needed a break. It was definitely occupying too much "mental real estate," as you say. The biggest drawback, in my opinion, to letting it go entirely is the contact I have with some friends who I would not have re-found were it not for Facebook. I don't know how long I'll stay off, but I'm not feeling overly drawn to it either. Thanks for a very interesting post.
Lynn
Thanks Lynn,
I have not deleted either. I have just adjusted my privacy settings to the max and left a link to my blog in my personal information. I also deleted the app from my phone so that I won't be tempted.
I deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone and iPad too, and moved it off the toolbar on my laptop, because I knew I'd be tempted to peek at it. And I am tempted, every day, a couple of times, at least. It's just harder to do now, so the urge is fading a little.