Bappi

Bappi

6 Years Without A Facebook Account 

You might find it difficult to believe that someone would choose to delete their Facebook account. But I had quite a few good reasons to do it. Here are some of the reasons why I finally decided to leave Facebook. 

Privacy concerns

This is probably the main reason why many Facebook users choose to delete their accounts. I felt that Facebook wasn’t safeguarding my privacy in a way that I could trust. I was going through a tough time in my life and felt I needed more time to myself. I didn’t want to and couldn’t be bothered sharing everything I was going through, even though Facebook kept prompting me to share and participate. Eventually, I just got fed up with Facebook and didn’t want to share my life as much as Facebook wanted me to. So I just deactivated my account.

Employment

Another reason I decided to delete my Facebook account was that I didn’t want potential employers discovering my Facebook profile and digging through my posts. They were never posted to share them with anyone other than friends.  

It was too addictive

I found Facebook to be extremely addictive. I was checking Facebook frequently, looking at status updates from my friends. And other applications made me feel that I needed to keep checking for rewards and updates. I realized that Facebook was interfering with my daily life to the point where it was harming me. The solution was simple: deactivate my account to eliminate the temptation to continually check notifications.

Evolving

Like many other ex-Facebook users, towards the end, I spent more time on other social media applications like LinkedIn or Twitter. They were more in line with what I was looking for. So eventually it seemed pointless to maintain my Facebook account. 

Unliking Facebook

I mentioned earlier I didn’t exactly trust Facebook with my privacy. But I wasn’t totally on-board with Facebook’s terms of service either. I inherently distrusted Facebook’s CEO and the direction the company was going in. The way they use personal data and manipulate news fees, applying censorship and bias put me off using it. So I guess closing my account was also my way of protesting against Facebook and what it had become.

Life after Facebook

I deactivated my account over 6 years ago. It’s something I would highly recommend to others who might be thinking about doing the same. I was fed up with ‘liking’ things just because of some weird sense of obligation I felt. Or constantly comparing myself with other people I knew. And the worst was the amount of time I spent scrolling through the bullshit that appeared in my feed.

It was only after closing my Facebook account that I realized how exhausting social media is. I now spend more time in actual conversations and going out with friends. It’s more interesting when I meet up with them because I don’t see their daily updates on Facebook anymore.

Finally, I’m more focused on living my life rather than posting about my life online. Closing my Facebook account was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. Maybe it’ll be the same for you!   

So, I’ve finally moved to VS Code from Sublime Text 3. I have been using Sublime Text from basically since I’ve started coding, back in 2010. Since VS Code came out, I’ve heard so many good things about it, but I ignored. I really loved ST3 (and I still do). Last month I told myself, there’s nothing wrong if I try this new code editor, and so I installed it and gave it a try. After using it for couple of days, I started to understand why I’ve been hearing so many good things about it. So today, I’ve uninstalled ST3 and started using VS Code as my only code editor. So long ST3, thanks for your amazing service.

I’ve deleted my LinkedIn profile today and I thought I should write why I did that. Don’t worry, I’ll not bother you to tell it’s pros and cons, as I think you already know that stuff. Here I’ll share only my personal experience with LinkedIn.

I started using LinkedIn back in 2011, along with Twitter. I already had a Facebook account. I started spending way too much time browsing through useless messages, filtering relevant notifications, and no surprise, I become addicted to social media. Slowly I began to understand, this has to change. 

My process of cleaning up my social media and disconnecting from it had begun in early 2013. I’d already reduced my Twitter followings from the thousands down to just over a hundred real friends and industry influencers that I actually knew and talked to regularly. Facebook had already been given the boot, as I felt it was just too distracting and didn’t add anything to my life. As a result, I became more focused and productive almost immediately. It was like being set free from the obligation to continually check notifications, updates, and respond to them. 

With LinkedIn, I asked myself why I was still using it, and what I got out of it. I wanted to be connected with industry professionals, and I already had Twitter for that. I also wasn’t actively looking for jobs, since from the beginning I always had jobs that I like. I had GitHub to showcase my skills and works. So in the real world I found no use of it. On the downside, I did receive hundreds of spam offers from people and bots. Most of them were automated and very often incompatible with my skills, experience, and profile. So finally, I said goodbye to LinkedIn today. 

Since I decided to ditch my LinkedIn account, I’ve made more effort to develop professional relationships, seek out work opportunities, and have become far more productive when it comes to advancing my professional career.

Hey! My name is Bappi and I guess this post is a bit obligatory.

I’m a WordPress developer. I love creating WordPress themes and plugins.

Rather than throw that stuff all over the Internet, I wanted to track it all in one place so I thought I’d track it here.