Goodbye Facebook: why I'm stepping back

First of all, to be clear: I am not deleting my FB account, because I still find FB useful for marketplace and certain groups I'm part of. But other than that, I will be stepping back at the beginning of Lent, and plan on permanently minimising my use of Facebook - getting out of it what I need, but putting nothing in.

How this has come about

I have loved Facebook since 2007, because it has allowed me to easily stay up to date with what friends and family in distant lands are up to - and they're all over the place: the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Austria, ... it's the little things they post about life, that made me feel connected. It's not the same as a once-a-year Christmas update letter: not the highlights, but the nitty-gritty and their random thoughts and small life happenings. That is what has kept me on FB, really, when various friends have left over the past few years.

The other really useful FB feature I got into when the kids were born were the Facebook Groups. I hadn't used those prior to then, but once I had the kids I suddenly discovered local mothers' groups, support and information, and then groups about any and every interest I have. A tribe for every interest. I still love that about FB.

So those two things are the reasons I'm staying, why FB is still a useful tool for me. But it has its downsides. 

• Ads: the ads are manifold and they are targeted. So targeted it's actually worrying sometimes. FB knows where I've been, what I've browsed and searched, even what I've talked about with my husband the evening before. This won't change by my minimising my FB use, of course, but at least I won't be engaging with those ads and buying things.
• Likes: when I post something, I can't help but wonder who will see it, who will react to it, what they will say if they comment. And to put it simply: I don't want to give mental space to that any more. I love sharing our family life with friends and family far away, but...
• Privacy: for the kids, mostly, rather than my own privacy - they are 6 and 4, and I have been increasingly cautious about safeguarding their privacy online. On FB, I created a secret group years ago which was the only place where I would post their faces and stories about them. That secret group was for friends and family by invitation only, so it couldn't be found or seen by anyone else. That was of course fine in terms of the wider public, but I just don't want to continue giving their (our) pictures to FB at all. They are a commercial company and we are the data; that is the deal, and I know it; and while it's not necessarily anything sinister, I prefer to minimise our engagement with it as far as it's possible.
• Time: FB invests huge sums in finding ways to keep users scrolling, keep them on their site for longer, occupy and own their time and attention. I'm not immune to their techniques, even though I do recognise them - and that irritates me no end. 

You might ask, but what about this blog? Isn't this in the public domain? And yes it is, but there are so few views that I know it's not being widely viewed by the Internet at large, and I also keep our names off it so we can't be easily searched for online. The photos I put on here, as this is a Google Blogger hosted blog, are already on the Google ecosystem because our photos are automatically backed up to Google Photos, so I'm not duplicating and adding more photos to the Internet. I'm just curating and showing certain ones.

Of course this is not stepping off the Internet altogether, which is what I would need to do if I wanted to completely safeguard our privacy. It can't be done. We already have a footprint and I don't kid myself for a minute to think that we could hide; nor would we want to, really. It's about engaging with this thing, safely, and on my terms - and that's what it comes down to in the end. So for me this means I shall step back from social media, from the likes and reactions and comments, and go back to a less "social" but more meaningful type of interaction online.

This blog will continue, though. Lots of love to you all, friends.