In May 2013 while planning my trip to China and Japan after having thought about it for a while, I decided to stop using Facebook forever. So I’m going to share why I did that in first place, what happened right after that and how I feel now after 8 years.

l just want to clarify that I’m not trying to convince anyone to do the same. Everything I say is purely based on my own experience and my personal opinion. Also it’s important to say that even though this doesn’t look that difficult now because there are more platforms and some younger people might even think “who’s using facebook these days?”. Eight years ago it was a very different story.

Before I forget, this is the video in case you prefer to watch a more complete version:

PART I: Why I Decided To Stop Facebook

You might find this interesting but this has nothing to do with privacy, even though we all know the different scandals. But this is not the real reason.

The truth is that I was ‘wasting’ a lot of time on the platform but the worst thing is that I was not even having fun. I was sharing every party, every holiday, every event in my life… and for years my Facebook profile stood as a monument to a life that now feels like it belongs to someone else. This is not really who I wanted to be. And I don’t blame Facebook, I can only blame myself for not being able to understand the game.

I wanted to cut off Facebook even before… but there were 5 things delaying my decision such as losing contact with people, fear of missing out, losing my photos, relationships and job related reasons.

PART II: What Happened After

Of course this decision was going to have consequences.

Questions from multiple friends if I checked their pets videos on Facebook, If I saw their calendar events, their Messenger chats, some pending requests and so on. My answer: “I don’t have and I don’t use Facebook”.

I think for couple of years I felt a bit weird because I needed to repeat the same thing over and over again in every social moment and back in the days Facebook groups were really a big thing and not being there in a way made me feel as an outsider. Again, I don’t think anyone wanted to make me feel that way, it was just a natural thing. You’re not there, then you just miss it. That’s life.

PART III: How Do I Feel Now? (After 8 Years)

I definitely feel much better because suddenly I had more time to focus on projects I really enjoyed, I became more sociable in the real life; more engaged with my own personal development; more open to ideas and experiments… and started to use my energy on people I do actually care about.

Don’t get me wrong I opened an Instagram account 2 years ago and started to use Twitter last year but this time I learned from my Facebook mistake and I use those platforms with moderation. In fact, I think if we have a business or a brand, these platforms can be super helpful.

So, I’m glad I made that I left Facebook 8 years ago because from my perspective these days we are seeing unprecedented levels of unhappiness and depression because Facebook and obviously many more platform can make everybody believe they aren’t good enough, or they don’t look right, or their opinion is not important. This is probably a wider problem with media and the way businesses are run.

And I certainly also understand the original idea was to make people more connected but I truly feel that somewhere along the way, we lost the point.

If you missed my previous post, you can read it here.