In late October, when I deleted my Facebook account, I felt marginally worried about it. Today (Dec. 19) as yet another privacy scandal is exploding in the faces of Facebook's leadership, I feel fantastic.
However, quitting has disrupted my holiday season a bit.
Now every single time I hear about a Facebook leak or breach, I don't have to worry about if my photos have been exposed or not. I don't need to go into Facebook and fiddle with its system of privacy settings, which are all set at a font far too small.
MORE: How to Delete Your Facebook Account
And every time The New York Times runs a scathing story that reveals how low things are going inside the house that Zuck built, I get to enjoy these articles with a happy (and admittedly smug) detachment.
Oh, and nobody's yelled at me for deleting my account and abandoning ship. Instead, everyone just shrugs and talks about how they should leave.
During the 6 or so weeks that passed since I killed the account, my friends and family just used other ways of contacting me, like texting and email, and I didn't feel like I missed out on any news, thanks to my tee-totaling by keeping Instagram (which is owned by Facebook). And I was able to log into services with my email address, as I am not seeing any that demand you use Facebook anymore.
On the upside, I've now only got one social network where I see friends shouting at strangers, but I'll keep Twitter as it's actually valuable for my job. Also, I never have to worry about offending someone by not accepting their friend request.
The one downside, though, is that I didn't get invited to a certain holiday party, which is run by someone who uses Facebook to announce the event. I'm guessing that's going to happen at least once more by the end of the year, but I'm increasingly OK with this phenomena.
Not to sound like a parent, but if someone won't invite you to a party just because you're not on Facebook, they're either extremely lazy or you're not as good friends as you think you are. Also, I could have just reached out to said party organizers if it truly mattered to me.
So, dear reader, smash that Delete button. Erase your Facebook account. You don't need it, and you don't need to directly add to the monthly active user count numbers for a company opening your private messages to corporate brands.
