PART 1: Deactivating Facebook Account

The days where facebook has been considered a “cool” way to keep up to date with your friends from abroad have seen their glorious days – what is left is daily spamming by game app invitations as far as you have not managed to block them already between pictures of food (why the heck did facebook buy instagramm?) and status updates from your hungover friends from last night, random ranting about neighbours, contents of fridges, telling everyone at which restaurant someone is eating what food, exaggerated expressions of feelings with ex!cla!ma!tion! marks, sometimes deeply philosophical phrases stolen from someone else and so on and so on.

I have to admit I have been using facebook actively for the past years and as a social media native, I have successfully used it to communicate with people from all over the world and as a medium to keep in touch or get to know people.

You can easily get addicted to facebook, as loggin into it is like reading the OK! Magazine or the German BILD – but with people you know as main stars and wannabes in it. It is not only the interest towards dear friends you want to keep in touch with, but also some kind of voyeurism and sometimes exhibitionism you are engaged in. A lot of people are living a second life within the blue social network and by now, after years of heavy “facebooking”, I have come to the point where it is not interesting or entertaining any more.

Trying to get rid of mere “acquaintances” on facebook, deleting hundreds every now and then one by one, as facebook has not managed to find a way to make it easier to “unfriend” contacts, I am still left with quite a lot of people, as my work as promoter and networker brought me many “friends” abroad. Facebook was inevitably the easiest way to keep in touch.

However, especially since the end of last year (2012), I was highly annoyed by the amount of people who still sent “business requests” via facebook, inviting me to events who did not take place in Berlin, if it was snowing hundreds of people complaining about the snow, people at work who kept updating their facebook status so you wondered which dumbass had to pay those people, and so on, and so on. There were so many rather insignificant “updates” so I missed a lot of the important ones by dear ones.

Now, I want to try out if exiting facebook sorts out less important information. My aim is to get off of facebook for as long as possible. Deactivating the facebook account is an experiment. I want to get the answers to the following two questions:

1. What happens to the information overflow – a full stop? Personal invitations and calls like in the good old days?

2. Does it affect my work efficiency if I do not check on facebook every day? Do I get to spend more time on my thesis paper or more on trivial readings and social activities?

3. How do social relationships shift through not being on facebook any more?

Curious how this will turn out, as I do not check emails or my mobile fon very often at the moment.

I will keep you updated.