My Story: Facebook
While I was in higher grade in Primary School, two of my friends told me about a social networking site called Facebook. They used it and eagerly wanted me to make an account. I said that I’d do it but it wasn’t until after a few weeks when I finally made one. When I logged in, I saw that I had received two friend requests. We chatted for a while and then logged off. I had logged back in after a few weeks and saw that there was no change. No friend requests, no messages, absolutely nothing. That’s when I thought that there was no use for it. So I logged off for the last time and my Facebook account fell silent for many years.
When I started High School, I met many new students and gained new friends. It soon became apparent to me that nearly all of them used Facebook. But this did not encourage me to log back into Facebook. It wasn’t until I saw that many of my high school friends use Facebook that I began to use it as well.
My account started off slowly- I received friend requests from my friends, we chatted, shared jokes, and so on. However, we never chatted on a regular basis; I would log in once or twice a week. Then things began to speed up. I began to receive numerous friend requests from my classmates. From what was nine friends rocketed to 40 then to 100. And it didn’t stop there. I soon got multiple notifications and chatted a little with classmates. I began to like Facebook. I had fun chatting with friends, commenting on funny pictures, starting up social groups, seeing what was happening to friends and so on.
After roughly a year on Facebook, I got tired of it. To me, Facebook soon seemed like the same thing day after day. Status updates, new posts, unnecessary notifications and so on. It began to bore me. Eventually, my Facebook account fell silent once more. And after many months, I decided that I no longer needed a Facebook account so I deleted it.
So my Facebook experience was simple. I was encouraged by friends to begin a Facebook account, gained more friends and shared good times through this large networking site. But eventually, it was my decision, and my decision alone, which closed my Facebook account.
Now the question is why I got bored of Facebook? How did I get bored of a social site in which millions use? There are three main reasons to why I closed down my account.
Firstly, throughout my time online, I never found Facebook addictive. Facebook, to me, didn’t seem very interesting. For me, Facebook was simply a site where you chat to friends, upload and share images, and post things that are ‘on your mind’. I can share similar things via SMS or face to face. With SMS, I can keep in touch with my friends and friends only, no classmates with whom I never talk to. That takes us to the next reason to why I closed my Facebook.
Secondly, I saw that the people, who were online the majority of the time, were my classmates with whom I don’t know well. As I stated above, I never speak to them, thusly, I never chatted with them on Facebook. Since I could not chat with anyone, I, basically, had nothing to do. This happened many times during my time on Facebook. An easy way I resolved this was to log out and do something else, like check my e-mail. This takes me to my final reason.
Finally, my e-mail account began to flood with unnecessary Facebook notifications. Most of these notifications were status updates and posts from classmates, which I did not care about. I used to delete them all but after long times of not logging into my e-mail, my inbox was flooded with these notifications. As a frantic decision, I closed down my e-mail account. From then on, every time I logged into Facebook, I was told to register my email, which I never did.
Eventually, all these reasons, and many more minor ones, resulted in the deletion of my Facebook account. As a result of this action, I found more time to spend on the things I love to do.
Now, I’m not saying that Facebook is bad; in fact, it’s a wonderful site for socializing. That’s why it has millions of users. All I explained in this article was my Facebook experience, no-one else’s.
