Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2014; its figures and facts are from that year, including user numbers (Facebook itself reported around 1.35 billion monthly active users then), market capitalisation, organic reach, the grace period after deleting an account and the privacy changes it mentions.
With more than 1.2 billion users worldwide and some 750 million active accounts, Facebook has become the most addictive social network. But studies show that Facebook makes you spend more, work less and, in general, brings us down. Facebook has become a liability in our lives and a drain on our productivity.
That is how bluntly journalist Anna James, a regular contributor to Entrepreneur.com, puts it in an article for the magazine giving six reasons to quit Facebook.
1. Facebook is the ultimate waste of time
She says she joined Facebook about eight years ago, and despite the limits she sets herself (one hour a day at most, plus two hours on Saturdays and Sundays), that adds up to 10 hours a week: 4,160 hours, or 173 days straight, that she has thrown away on Facebook since 2007, when she opened her account.
Now bear in mind that even when you are not logged in to Facebook on your computer, you carry it with you on your smartphone. Many people use it at work; others check their news feed every hour.
Would you spend six months of your life looking at your friends’ and strangers’ holiday photos? If you were forced to do it and paid a salary for it, you probably wouldn’t want the job.
2. Facebook is a money pit
In 2012, as we all know, Facebook went public. Today the company has a market capitalisation of more than $200 billion. It doesn’t sell shirts or shoes. That price is what the data in our profiles is worth. Our data is a gold mine for Facebook, because, as the saying goes, if something is offered to you for free, you are the product. You are the business; your data is the gold.
It started out as a fun, uncomplicated platform, and on the very day it went public its founder Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook would stay focused on what was good for its users. All of that is now a dead letter.
Even for those who used the network productively by following the pages and profiles that interested them, you no longer get 100% of the posts from the people or pages you follow (more like 9%). But you do get 100% of the advertising targeted at someone with your interests and tastes, based on your browsing history.
In other words, Facebook is now a place where advertisers take over your news feed. And the problem is that many of these advertisers offer products that are really a scam or a con.
In fact, Facebook has helped spread services that have put your information and your computer’s security at risk, because it exercises no control over advertisers. As a result, despite countless complaints and reports through Facebook’s own form, malicious software has kept spreading through the social network.
3. Facebook addiction
Psychologists warn that Facebook can be as addictive as any gambling habit. In fact, the Huffington Post published an article on how to quit Facebook without going through withdrawal, because giving up Facebook really can make you anxious, and you may need to find a substitute such as Twitter or LinkedIn. They are social networks too, but at least they can be used for something more productive, especially if you are a business owner or a professional.
In fact, once you close your Facebook account there is a 14-day cooling-off period: when someone deletes their account, they have those 14 days to change their mind and can get the account back exactly as they left it. Facebook gives you those 14 days knowing that a high percentage of people have a moment of weakness (withdrawal) and decide not to delete it after all.
LinkedIn is a platform made not for looking at holiday photos but for advancing your career.
4. Profiles are no longer private
After its controversial move last year, Facebook now bewilders users with an exhausting section of privacy options, but in the end the only way to be invisible to strangers on Facebook is to block a person before they add you.
And there’s more. Since it bought WhatsApp, Facebook has even more access to the contacts on your phone, so don’t be surprised if the network suggests that girlfriend you had 10 years ago, whom you haven’t spoken to since but whose number you never deleted. You have probably popped up as a suggestion for her too.
5. Facebook makes you less happy
A recent study by the Department of Behavioral Science at Utah Valley University found that the people who used Facebook the most were much unhappier than those who didn’t use it or used it less. The kind of news you consume and what your friends share also play a part.
6. You can’t trust Facebook
Remember the experiment Facebook ran, manipulating users’ news feeds so that they received news with a particular slant (negative or positive)? That shows how serious the reach of a social network of this size can be.
Facebook manipulated the news feeds of 689,000 users who had not given their consent, to test its theory of “emotional contagion” and its ability to manipulate people’s emotions through Facebook.
Most people who open a Facebook account don’t read the terms and conditions of the service. If they did, and took them seriously, nobody would ever open an account on the network. Then again, we wouldn’t install 99% of smartphone apps either.
The problem is that even if you can perhaps trust Facebook and the use it makes of your data today… can you trust it tomorrow?
Privacy and the use of our data aside, though, the question is not whether using Facebook is good or bad, but how it is used. If you think Facebook helps your business or your career (in short, helps you earn more money or gain more knowledge), all well and good. But if not, it’s time to start asking yourself whether all that time, which is sometimes a lot of time, is worth it.
Further reading
