Why I Left Facebook
When my mother died in 2018, it was, among other things, just so out of character. I mention this because when someone that reliably present, and that attached to living, suddenly ceases to be, it takes that vexing Mary Oliver line—“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”—and cranks it up to eleven.
After my mom’s death, the low-grade anxiety I’d always had about how to spend my time ramped into something much harder to manage. Crises still focused the mind and brought me relief—weird, I know, but part of why I love entrepreneurship and once thrived in the field of crisis communications. But on any ordinary day, the kind of day we’re supposed to greet with hashtag-blessed, I was haunted. No matter what I was doing—working, writing, cooking, cleaning—I felt I should be doing something else. Sleep seemed like a total waste—life was far too short to lie down—but beyond that, I couldn’t be at all confident I was doing the ‘right’ amount of anything.
During this time, I continued to go on Facebook, something I’d done practically every day since 2005. Like most people I know, I worried a bit about my Facebook usage: Am I ignoring my family? Am I being too sedentary? Should I be weeding? But again: nagging doubts were nothing new, and besides: I loved it.
I live on an actual island. We moved here to be close to family, and I wouldn’t exchange that for anything, but I have dear friends from so many earlier chapters: Hong Kong, Taiwan, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Darien, Cincinnati. My relatives, too, are strewn across the globe—in South Africa, where I was born, and in all the places in addition to the States that South Africans leaving in the 1970s were wont to go: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Europe. Facebook made it possible to have all these people—and over time some of their friends as well?!—as an integral part of my day. Take that, physics! I could wake up on my tiny island with its stately but unreliable ferries…and still have coffee with anyone. With everyone.
I was especially grateful for Facebook when my kids were very young. I know that many parents delight in the baby years. I loved the gummy smiles and tiny toes, but for me, long stretches without being able to kick around ideas—or even focus on a book—were shamefully hard. I distinctly remember staring into the eyes of my infant son, who was suddenly doing a bang-up job of supporting his own head. “Awesome,” I said. “What else you got?”
Facebook allowed me to connect with adults—in short, asynchronous bursts that would be considered extremely weird in real life but were ideal for a nursing mother…and later for a harried, sandwich-generation CEO.
Facebook was also important to me as a writing platform. In my career, I’ve always written “to a brief”: for many years, business executives hired me to write their speeches, key messages, and heartfelt apologies. When I left crisis communications to help grow a small company, I still felt in many ways like I was writing to a brief in that almost everything I produced—pitches, presentations, pep talks—served to build the business. On Facebook, I got to write in a way that was freer. I still imposed some constraints on myself—whatever I said had to be true, new (meaning my own), and kind—but it didn’t have to serve a goal. As I connected with people over many of life’s smallest moments, I was quite sure that my literary faves—keen observers of the unremarkable like Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster—would have loved social media.
This is all to say: not only did I enjoy Facebook; together with my HappyLightTM and its human equivalent (my steadfastly positive and practical husband), Facebook helped me keep serious depression at bay. I know the mental health risks of social media are real, but, for me, Facebook was a boon. Why then, if I wasn’t unhappy on Facebook—if, quite the contrary, I derived real value from it—did I sign off permanently on Monday, January 20th?
Because thirteen days earlier, on Tuesday, January 7th, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Meta owns Facebook, Threads, and Instagram) announced a set of operational changes that will let disinformation—already a scourge with real-world consequences—spread exponentially. How best to curb disinformation is a worthwhile debate (I have my own reasons for questioning the wisdom of having human fact checkers). But abandoning the fight altogether? I’ve watched the Zuckerberg announcement many times. It’s crafted well enough to create some ambiguity, but there’s no question in my mind that his main message to Trump, for whom this video was made, falls somewhere between:
‘We’re fine with whatever as long as we’re making money’
and
‘Sure! We’d be delighted to help shape a post-truth world that keeps people distracted and divided while a small handful of us continue to amass unprecedented amounts of power and wealth.”
In the days after that announcement, I couldn’t enjoy Facebook. All I could think was: this company is officially on board with what I view as our single biggest threat—the systematic dismantling of a shared sense of reality—and here I am, still loyally logging in each day? Still routinely giving them my attention?
I know my leaving makes no difference to Facebook. It’s harnessing the attention of billions that rakes in the big bucks. But if I consider the finite asset that is my attention not from Zuckerberg’s perspective but from my own, it goes from being worthless to being, well, everything. To mangle William James: not only is my life simply the sum of what I attend to; what I attend to is also something—arguably one of the only things—I can control. Leaving Facebook is not my answer to the broader question “What now?” Not by any stretch. There’s so much that needs doing. But for me, this was what some management gurus call the “next right thing.”
What about for you? What actions—large or small—have been your next right thing in the face of it all? As someone who always has more questions than answers, I‘d love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading,
Kate
***
Two production notes:
1) Now that I’ve left Facebook, I’m doing my daily mixing-and-mingling on Bluesky. From a functionality perspective, it’s more like X than Facebook. I don’t hate it, but it feels a little awkward—like arriving at a party where the host is still getting ready, and it’s not clear whether to help in the kitchen or chat with the lone guest staring at the mantel. On the plus side: you build your own world there instead of letting an algorithm do it, which gives you more control over the news and views you consume. So far, I’ve chosen to connect around basketball, succulents, fonts, mini trucks, the TV show Severance—and WHAT ON EARTH the Democratic Party has been doing since November 5th.
2) Sit down—this one’s a doozy: the very platform I’m using to share this newsletter has a Nazi problem. ::head in hands:: Substack, in a 2023 decision described here, allows extremists to use the platform, so long as their content stops short of inciting violence. Some of these extremist newsletters have paid subscribers, meaning hate speech is generating revenue for Substack (Substack takes a 10% cut). As recently as last week, Substack co-founder Chris Best reiterated what the company views as a principled stance on free speech: “We buy into the old idea that we can strongly disagree with what someone has to say and still defend their right to say it.” Over the past year, many prominent writers, like the historian Heather Cox Richardson, have chosen to stick with Substack, either because of their free speech absolutism or despite it. For example, here’s a statement from economist Glenn Loury, a self-described centrist, explaining his decision to stay. Other prominent writers, most famously the tech reporter Casey Newton, have chosen to leave Substack for ghost.org, a publishing platform with similar functionality but a firm ‘no Nazis-no hate groups’ stance. Back in January 2024, Newton wrote this explanation for his decision to switch. The more I read and think about this, the more I lean toward to switching, too—but you all are smart: what do you think? In other words: what now?
Note: originally published on Substack, February 2, 2025
