I did something this month that I once thought I’d never be able to do: I deleted my Facebook account. I tried to delete it earlier this fall, then caved and reinstated it. Not because I missed it, but because I worried about not notifying the two-hundred-plus people who had liked my writing page and been with me since the beginning of my return to writing in 2010.
Worrying about telling people on Facebook was silly, but I still panicked about the length of time it took to build up those readers and cheerleaders, only to hit the delete button fifteen years later and walk away. Facebook used to be a fun and fast way to stay in touch with people. Real, human people. Remember at the beginning, when there were no ads or sponsored content and the only thing you saw in your feed were posts from actual friends and family members?
Somewhere along the line, Zuckerberg and others monetised the whole place. They offered it to us for free, which seemed like a bargain, until we eventually realised that if there’s no fee, we ourselves are the product. I got tired of being sold to, day in and day out, and consuming posts I had no interest in seeing. I became weary of volunteering to be a product for a bored and immoral billionaire. So I pulled the plug.
My privacy is valuable. So is yours. For so long, I fell into the trap Zuckerberg et al had set for me: that I would be missing out if I wasn’t on their social media platforms. Long after it ceased to do what it initially promised (connect me to my loved ones near and far), I continued to log on, worried about being left out or left behind.
But now, a few weeks after I actually deleted my account, I feel so much freedom. And joy. It felt so damn great that I deleted LinkedIn. Now I’m left with my two websites, this one and Ruby Finch Books, plus Bluesky and Substack where I host my monthly newsletter and podcast. That’s it. I deleted Instagram earlier this year, and now I’m reading more, writing more, staring out the window more.
I reached out to a few friends to be sure they had my cell number before I pulled the plug on all social media other than Bluesky and Substack, and I’ve been setting up some actual phone calls with friends to catch up like it’s 1992 again. Much more real than hitting “like” on an infrequent status update. Easing back into a mostly analog world feels like such a good idea to me in 2025.
It’s an act of resistance, against the billionaires who mistakenly believe that human beings long for AI trash to replace human creativity. These morally bankrupt guys offered us shitty less-than versions of everything: connection, relationships, shopping, entertainment, a cure for loneliness. It took me fifteen years, but better late than never to recognise that I’d been conned.
The real world offers me so much more. It’s rich with texture. Nature is where we find true inspiration and beauty. Sunsets and ocean waves and birds calling to each other in the trees. Recapturing time offline feels like coming back to myself. Unlike the internet and AI, the physical experience is housed in a body, not free-floating somewhere unattached to anyone or anything. One is real. Embodied. The other is simply an idea, one ripe for exploitation and designed as a rip-off of the real, human entity it’s based on.
I know I’m not the first person to have these thoughts about privacy, recapturing our time, and deleting social media which has become corrupted and destroyed by billionaire oligarchs. This is a big cultural theme at the moment. But I know for sure that privacy has value. So does our human experience, as messy and unpredictable as it’s always been. Right now, I’m loving the choice to live more wholeheartedly in the analog world, instead of the digital one that looks shiny and inviting but has instead proved itself to be hollow and unsatisfying.
