I’m conflicted – I want to delete my Facebook account. For some years I was benefiting from this and other platforms by working with programs and providing strategies to businesses. But I wanted out.
I stopped working on social media related projects and I had my social media accounts either deleted or disabled for around 2 years but I had to come back due to academic reasons; university club meetings, tutoring sessions and group studies are conducted and coordinated on Facebook. It boggles my mind that that sentence describes the norm.
Just when I decided the negatives outweigh the positives and again when I was so close to deleting my facebook, whatsapp and instagram accounts, my attention was brought to the current use of social media as a platform to push forward change in a way that was not possible some 10 to 15 years ago.
If it was not for social media, it would not have been possible to get the world to rally behind a cause – frankly it is heart breaking that such issues still exists even in 2020.
During the pandemic, we were kept in touch with our friends and family through this platform, racism and other injustice gets exposed routinely, and people are able raise awareness and organize actions against injustice through this very platform.
It’s a great tool that has helped change for the better. But it’s also a pit that drowns people and tears people apart despite being one click away. It’s a platform that encourages what the world needs and fights against what shouldn’t exists. But it also does the opposite.
It taps into our humanity and satisfies that need to connect, but also chips away our connections.
But digging deeper what it really feels like is The Matrix, where you and I are batteries in a vast farm of others like you and me, it’s sole purpose to keep us engaged, to keep us dreaming so that our lives can be harvested and sold and traded to benefit the few that are at the very top.
We have willingly taken the blue pill. In the next days or weeks to come, I intended to delete my Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, gmail and other google and microsoft accounts. That’s the plan, it didn’t work in the past, but let’s see.
There are alternatives to gmail, microsft office, onedrive, google drive, whatsapp, android with Googleapps, windows, macos, ios … Not easy, but doable. I have moved about 80% away from these.
Follow my blog if you are interested in alternatives or want to join forces and start taking control of your own data.