Here is some Engaged-Buddhist-style Wisdom, to protect your peace of mind from a recurring onslaught of unwanted sensationalism and manipulation:
“How to delete your Facebook account, in 8 steps.” Click to show full size.
Note: You’ll have to successfully endure a 30-day withdrawl (which will be interesting to see just how addicted you are… can you prove to yourself that you aren’t addicted by making it?). Even if you make it the 30 days, don’t be surprised if you get trolled from time to time by Facebook (who still wants you back) to come on back and log in again. Just like any well-organized cult would. That ought to creep you out.
The Wisdom here is devoid of fun, so I apologize for that, folks.
Originally seen here. The comments posted below, once you visit that link, are quite interesting, BTW! There are many inspiring testimonials of those who don’t regret leaving.
PS: here’s a valuable tip posted as a comment, which bears repeating (before your Facebook account deletion):
Post a status asking people to DM you their number. Give it a couple of weeks and also DM people important to you to get the number. Then message each other using signal.
I bravely deleted my account when FB was just getting going! I signed up to see what the hot new thing was all about, and was immediately creeped out by it. I deleted my account having never posted a thing.
Nothing is sacred in this universe the buddha even seperated his wordings only to find centuries later it was all found and translated n exposed for all to see just like our nakedness exposed publicly …
I dont see the fuss or difference of here or there facebook has the same similarities as sutta central their rules are the same as here and people relate the same here to from interesting topics to silly mayhems so whats the difference the community standards are no difference On Ai on there and peoples posts are ok if you search for the good stuff n stay away from the bad …Ive been blocked …kicked out …warned erased…disagreed with with all aspects of life n look what happened ! Im here ! ??? N still cant work it out can you hope the buddha can correct imperfected qualities of people before we are all alienated and erased once again ! There is all good and bad to be put aside for most people besides the ones that justify what they call is ok …to them too …it means only some can tolerate the length of no intelligence and some matters in humanity how many times will we all get it correct ? And corrected with another? Non I bet …loosely
If you’re a bit risk averse, I’d like to point out that you can download all your information first before you delete your account (in case all those photos etc that you’ve posted are holding you back) and also you can just deactivate (but not delete) your account for an unlimited length of time, which makes your data inaccessible until you choose to reactivate your account.
I constantly waffle back on forth on whether or not to delete my profile. I deleted the app off my phone, but there are several buddhist and history based groups I sub to that have good content.
I have since removed myself from all other groups and either blocked or banned all the toxic people that I was “friends” with, and my experience has become much better.
Strangely I don’t find FB addictive. I maintain my account to access specific non-political groups and have sporadic contact with old friends around the world.
This has nothing to do with self-control. The platform per say doesn’t appeal to me. The idea of accessing news via FB seems bizarre.
I’ve been off Facebook for 10 years and Instagram (the only other social media I used) for over a year. I’m far less restless and not as wasteful with my time. It’s a major burden and worth putting down. Now if I can just figure out how shake off these forums
I’ve on & off deleted FB and generally use it for access to certain groups. This the only Buddhist forum i use and maintain an account on.
I find the using of forums to be with diminishing and something like 5 posts per year is probably oprimal because posting about things like whether i use facebook or not is rather worthless. It’s fun to talk but it doesn’t go with intensive training.
I think that threads like this are most helpful when they are
not judgemental,
recognize that people use platforms in different ways and have a diversity of social situations, and
provide realistic alternatives.
Immigrants are in a very different situation than someone who only needs to stay connected with a handful of people (for whom email is probably a better alternative than any other platform). For some communities a broad network of shallow connections is very important. In this, Facebook excels. Telling people that they should maintain sms communications with 50 people in another country isn’t realistic. And to say that those relationships must not be that important then is quite judgemental.
Using a news feed reader (aka RSS reader) is a very practical, and some would say much better, way to find out about things that are important to us. That’s the point of this wiki page. Please feel free to post questions there about setting things up.
@MattStL, if the pages and groups you follow on Facebook are public, then you can use a service like this one to access the posts in a news feed reader. Unfortunately it won’t work for profiles.
This is very true. I have quite a few friends all over the world that I get to keep in contact with via Facebook. Similarly, I have work-related contacts on LinkedIn.
For close family-related matters we have private groups on Line, WhatsApp, etc, but as @Snowbird indicates, a platform that does the broad-shallow thing is really useful - occasional photos of friends’ travels, children, new house, etc. These are not things you’d want to message directly to several hundred people. In the old days it was the sort of thing you’d put into a Christmas card, or something…
Of course, I’d prefer a platform that has those positive aspects of Facebook that I’ve described without the obvious negatives that it can induce. But the way I and my friends use it I actually don’t have any trouble. In my circle, it would be strange to get into arguments over pictures of holidays, children, weddings, or funerals…
And just to be clear, I always assume any statement or question on a forum about Buddhism is directed to the situation most members would find themselves in - I didn’t realize the question was in regards to the general public. People who have no interest in practicing Dhamma wouldn’t necessarily be bothered by the emotional effects and added stress of social media and therefore would have no reason to come off.
But I was talking about people interested in practicing Dhamma. Not the general public. And this goes directly to what I was saying about judging others. That the immigrants that I know who use facebook to keep in touch with relatives are automatically not interested in practicing Dhamma? Please. It’s dangerous to project our shortcoming onto others.
hope the buddha can correct imperfected qualities of people before we are all alienated and erased once again ! There is all good and bad to be put aside for most people besides the ones that justify what they call is ok …to them too …it means only some can tolerate the length of no intelligence and some matters in humanity how many times will we all get it correct ? And corrected with another? Non I bet …loosely 
