#FEXIT

 

What does #FEXIT mean? Like recent secessionist movements like BREXIT and the threatened "CALEXIT" - it just seemed like a proper way of talking about dropping my Facebook account.  Considering that the nation of Facebook can be considered it's own political entity that comes with it's own rules, bylaws, governance, and mores, that a "Facebook EXIT" (or #FEXIT) just seems like a proper hashtag.  That is, if hashtags are valid ways of communicating in a non-social media world.  

In 2007, some friends of mine on a mission trip talked to me about this new thing that people were starting to use to connect with old friends and share pictures with each other.  Being single at the time and wanting to connect with old friends through a more efficient means than email (which wasn't all that great... neither was Myspace which, admit it, you've used!).  

I found this new social tool to be very helpful, and especially in the beginning I found it very useful, and honestly quite awesome.  Especially in that stage of life.  With Facebook, I was able to.

• Organize a monthly dinner club with fellow singles that wanted to enjoy fellowship at nice restaurants without the pressure of the dating scene. 
• Connect with my old High School class and share stories about where we are today... the same can be said for Texas A&M and Kelley business school classmates (some of whom like my writing, or at least claim to)
• On the buildup for several mission trips, I was able to communicate with supporters and potential supporters that shared my passion for missions around the world.  
• And lastly, as Facebook allowed longer posts, the posts that I would share in a way replaced thoughts that I shared in my old blog.  I have a passion for thinking critically about the events around us, as well as food & wine, travel, and living out my Christian faith.  

For all of these benefits, however, engagement with social media, as I think we all know, comes with a cost.  This cost has been magnified in recent years as platforms like those in the Facebook Empire and Twitter have sought to monetize the platform, and with it our online lives.  

We have become more stressed, more prone to attention-deficit in our lives, more envious, more angry, and more isolated.  It turns out that, as these platforms seek to monetize our attention, it's also their goal to make an already addictive platform more addictive and to get us to voluntarily enslave us to this digital world.  If you look at the statistics and perused a few feeds of people that aren't politically aligned with you, it's easy to see that this is in fact happening.  

A few books I've read that have helped shape my mind on this topic are 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You and Competing Spectacles by Tony Reinke and Them by Ben Sasse.  There are others, and I may read a few more, but the research and our experience is clear...  perhaps what we traded to outsource some of our social life to technology wasn't worth what we gain.

I also work in technology, specifically with marketing technology, and as such understand the power behind a tool such as Facebook and what they can, and likely are, doing with our personal data.  The algorithm behind these platforms are somewhat like what the game-makers in the Hunger Games control - it's there to benefit the system and it's goals, more so than what they tell us that they are trying to be "relevant" to us.  Facebook and Twitter are both businesses with monetary, societal, and based on how Mark Zuckerberg and his peers have been behaving, a political goal... one that if we really knew what was happening would frighten us.  I haven't seen The Social Dilemma (many friends have talked about this documentary), but the data that they would present wouldn't surprise me much. 

The algorithm that essentially decides what gets highlighted to us, and what is hidden from view, is there to meet those goals (as any executed business strategy for any company would - it's just that social media companies' strategy is to keep our eyeballs on the platform, keep us engaged, and to keep us engaged with the "right things.")  Essentially, what Facebook wants you to see will be seen, and what they want to gaslight they will fact check, and what they want to disappear will be shadow banned.  This is why, I believe, that what's happened in 2020 has been so socially damaging.  We are using a social media ecosystem that is designed to push us to a certain set of opinions to engage with each other, and what we don't realize that the system we believe is enhancing our ability to communicate is actually keeping us from communicating.

Instead, it's pushing us to promote their propaganda, addicting us to the likes and the comment alerts, to virtue signal causes it/they believe in, and castigate those who would believe another way.  It doesn't matter what story from 2020 or 2021 you want to pick, the same approach has been holding true.  This tool that we believe is helping us connect with our friends (and once did) is now dehumanizing us and impacting our social and mental health.  

This algorithm is also very nicely separating people into categories of "we" and "them" on many different dimensions... political, medical, religious, and we tend to treat whoever the "them" is on any of these dimensions as "evil" and the "us" as virtuous, creating a vicious cycle that causes us to dehumanize each other.  A private message from a friend of mine from Houston, after I seemingly innocently changed a profile picture (I believe in human sin and that I am, while a Christian and forgiven, still a sinner in practice sadly) - spoke to me about how much of this poison that I myself had taken, and that perhaps "the Games" were affecting me more than I cared to admit. 

Yet, like any drug, I kept telling myself that I could control it.  I would take sabbaticals from Facebook, usually for a month or two at a time.  My wife would always tell me that I was more engaged in life and happier when I was off.  I continued, however, to attempt to control it through self-imposed guardrails and I even removed the social media apps I had on my phone.  This did help, and I would encourage you to take this action even if you decide to continue using the tools.  

A week ago, I read an article about an NFL football player for the Eagles, and perhaps there are many others, that removed themselves from social media and called it, according to ESPN "the key to happiness."  This is what did it for me.  Those that know me know that I don't buy this assessment (a connection with God through what Jesus did for us is what I believe the key to true happiness is), but what I do believe is that social media is damaging our ability to find it, including engaging in our faith authentically and connecting with others who share our faith.  I also want my friends to be my friends again, not people that I look at through the artificial lens of an algorithm designed to addict and unfortunately polarize us.

We need to get back to relating to each other again, outside of the Matrix (or I would say in 2020/1, the digital Hunger Games), and that's why I'm getting rid of my accounts.  When I read "Them" - one of the biggest pieces of wisdom that stood out to me was having a "why" behind social media and counting the cost versus the benefit behind using that platform.  

LinkedIn was the only platform where I could answer this question with a "the benefit of being here outweighs the costs."  Plus, for the large part, the content I get is professional and helps me in my career.   I don't think I can say that for the others, and there are alternatives.  Including connecting with friends, using these ancient things called phones and address books.  I'm also use a couple of messaging tools... Signal being my favorite because of privacy.  

The only reason I could think of staying on was the thought leadership and writing, and this blog is the alternative I'm working with.  My writing and sharing thoughts that would encourage those that believe as I do, and those that don't, to think and perhaps to see things from different lenses.  I plan to link a few of these posts to my account before I delete it (I mean, I do want to download my data before jumping off that pirate ship), and in that timeline I hope that if you've enjoyed reading my posts that you will follow my posts here.  I would really love that. 

I'm not here to encourage you to do as I have done, but perhaps think about what's happening to you when you engage with these platforms and set some boundaries.  However, I do want to keep connected so I hope that between now and when my account is deleted that you will reach out if you consider me a real friend, and make sure we have each others' cell numbers, or are connected on GroupMe or Signal or connected on LinkedIn.  That would encourage me a lot.  

As I close a lot of my Facebook "blog-style" posts, I hope that this encourages and challenges you.  That's my hope every time I get behind the keyboard to write.