Recently –right now, actually– I decided my time on Facebook needed to come to an end. No, I’m not going to deactivate my account because I actually need it for a few Pages and Groups I run for my internet projects. I’ve also noticed that when people deactivate their account, they often just reactivate it again later anyway.

What I’ll do instead is reduce my “friends list” down to just core family members, take the Facebook app off my phone, and make it a point to only log into the site for the purpose of administrating my pages.

So what brought this on? No single thing in particular. I’ve actually done a lot of thinking over the last few years about the impact Social Media (particularly Facebook) has on society and on our personal relationships, and for all the great things may do for some, I think it just does too much harm for me to participate in it any longer.

The biggest issue I have always had is reconciling the people I meet in person on a daily basis to the “online version” of their personality. It’s not true for everybody, but I’ve found that the majority of people I meet behave differently when they’re interacting on Facebook or other Social media sites.

People (and I am guilty of this) subconsciously carry a different persona when they’re speaking on Facebook versus when they’re speaking candidly in private. That means something different for every person, but there’s something about typing dialogue that can be seen by hundreds or thousands of people that causes people to behave differently. Some people like to showboat in public, others like to come off as overly sweet and compassionate, some are highly confrontational, and others can even be aggressive. None of these behaviors are inherently harmful in and of themselves, but when these behaviors don’t reconcile to who you are as a person, I believe they act as a firewall against your online friends getting to know the “real you.”

I’ve also become turned-off by the prevalence of groupthink in social media. Many people have turned to social media for validation of their political/social/economical opinions and as certain ideas and methodologies gain validation, they also gain prevalence and virality. It eventually becomes a “this group versus the world” ideology, where alternative ideas or stances are unanimously rejected (regardless of their legitimacy) simply because an idea has gained so much validation from groups of people that it no longer needs to defend itself as feasible or reasonable. It harbors and encourages closed-minded thinking. “People have bought-in to it, therefor it is good.” I can’t help but wonder if at some point in the future our culture will have a complete lack of diversity in terms of ideas and thought-processes because we will all be conditioned over time to think and believe the same things.

That was a bit of an aside — I’m not really here to get philosophical about what the long-term impacts of a society plugged into social media might be. The bottom line is that I desire more personal interactions with my friends and family than I can get on Facebook. I feel like “keeping touch” on Facebook has become an excuse to make little-to-no further effort to reach one-another on a personal level, and as I said earlier in this writing I believe without one-on-one personal interaction we are losing a major part of our relationships without even really knowing it.

So, at least for now, I am bidding Facebook adieu. It is nothing malicious toward my current “Facebook friends” and, in fact, I believe by doing so I am strengthening the most important friendships and other relationships in my life. My personal contact information will be public on my stagnant profile. I would love to write, call, email, Skype with anyone at any time!