Hiding your birthday from Facebook and other acts of digital isolation

In which he makes some FEELINGS known about Facebook

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make: I hid my birthday in Facebook today. It’s coming up soon and I decided that I didn’t want Facebook to broadcast it any longer, not even to Facebook friends. It’s part of my protracted plan to exit Facebook, hopefully for good. I have some feelings about this.

The short term impact of hiding my birthday is that I won’t get a deluge (OK, maybe a couple of dozen) of Facebook posts or messages congratulating me on my birthday. Some acknowledgement is always nice but let’s be honest: it’s triggered by a function on Facebook rather than people actually knowing the date on their own. It is what it is and I’m not offended if people don’t know or forget about my birthday (I only remember maybe a dozen birthdays), but one of the reasons of hiding the date is to escape that Happy Birthday ritual on Facebook. I haven’t wished anyone a happy birthday via Facebook in months and I think it’s only fair to remove any potential obligation to Facebook Friends.

I want to point out the Happy Birthday ritual as one of those things that tends to tie a person to Facebook; after all, no one wants to be the jerk who forgets to say Happy Birthday. And the fact that so many people we know are on Facebook means that many of us feel like we’ll be missing important stuff if we don’t check it multiple times/day.

But really, I’ve had enough of Facebook. Tired of the multiple changes in algorithms and functionality. Tired of the featured videos “above the fold”. Tired of the notifications. Tired of how the algorithm works to show posts, where chronological order is a foreign concept (albeit possible with the right setting, I think, but it’s not immediately obvious). Tired of the photos, the memes, the misinformation, the rants… well, I could make a large list here if I wanted. I’m also tired of not trusting either Facebook or its users, despite the fact that I know more Facebook Friends personally than I do Twitter Followers. I’m tired of how Facebook is probably causing more harm than good by permitting disinformation, fear and hatred to flourish at times. I’m tired of the ads.

I had a similar urge to leave Twitter after Elon Musk announced his intent to by the platform but I talked myself out of it. Twitter is also rife with problems but the character limits, among other things, seem less awful to me than Facebook and I’m quite adept at filtering out junk or poisonous content. Still waiting to see if Musk will succeed in buying Twitter or if the status quo will be maintained, which is one reason why I started a newsletter…, just in case.

I’m not 100% abandoning Facebook as it’s a convenient way to communicate with my extended family and long time friends, via Messenger. But Facebook keeps showing me the worst sides of people (mind you, the good sides, too) and I worry about how all of that personal information is used and where it will all end. I used to love Facebook (and Instagram) but the time and effort spent there is not very rewarding anymore. It may mean less contact with other people but I’m OK with that, having gotten even more used to that during these years of COVID-19. (and that whole topic is yet another reason why I want to stay away from Facebook).

How about we have more social platforms that encourage us to be the best parts of ourselves instead of the most controversial?