Some Ditch Social Networks to Reclaim Time, Privacy
USA Today
USA Today
Facebook reports that it has 400 million active users worldwide. Make that 399,999,999. Laura LeNoir is done.
"I feel better, I feel lighter, I got my privacy back," says LeNoir, 42, an office manager at an educational software company in Birmingham, Ala., who logged off a few weeks ago. "People say, 'You'll be back.' But I read more, walk the dogs more. I'll be fine."
As the social networking train gathers momentum, some riders are getting off.
Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online "friends" who aren't really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. If there's a common theme to their exodus, it's the nagging sense that a time-sucking habit was taking the "real" out of life.
"When I first closed my Facebook account, I felt disconnected from the world and missed the constant updates," says Leanna Fry, 32, of Provo, Utah, who is teaching English in Erzurum, Turkey. She signed off after feeling harassed by strangers. "But I've discovered I don't have to know what hundreds of people are doing. Now I have more time for people who really matter in my life."
Even super-connected celebrities are bolting. Disney pop siren Miley Cyrus quit Twitter last fall, followed by British singer Lily Allen. Both women said the site was proving a distraction from their relationships. Allen signed off with "I am a neo-Luddite, goodbye."
That desire to unplug has made an unexpected success out of websites such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seppukoo (a play on the Japanese word for "suicide"), free sites that automate and turbocharge the otherwise laborious manual process of scrapping your online self.
Lucca, Italy-based Seppukoo helped 20,000 people erase themselves from Facebook after the site launched last fall. Two-month-old Web 2.0 Suicide Machine — where a noose dangles near a ticker tracking the digital mayhem ("181,898 friends have been unfriended, 329,908 tweets removed") — has been used by 2,600 people. Thousands more are waiting to be accommodated by the site's small server, says Walter Langelaar, 32, one of three programmers who created the "art project" for Moddr, a media lab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
"We are not anti-social-networking," says Langelaar, noting that the program was conceived for a party the lab threw a year ago to encourage face-to-face interaction. "We do, however, feel things are getting so messy in that world that (the sites) just get in the way of people living their lives."
Facebook is not amused. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has blocked the servers of both sites and sent cease-and-desist letters stating that they violate Facebook's statement of rights and responsibilities policies by collecting user login data.
"Facebook provides the ability for (users) to use the site to deactivate their account or delete it completely," says Facebook spokesman Simon Axten.
Langelaar says Moddr has circumvented the block and counters: "We're not collecting login information; users bring their (data) to us. We are thinking of hiring our own lawyers."
Seppukoo, however, is now lifeless. "We have postponed any decisions until after our next Anti Social NotWorking art project comes out in the next weeks" is the cryptic comment from Guy McMusker of Les Liens Invisibles, a consortium of Web-focused artists responsible for the program.
Although Twitter is among the sites that programs such as Seppukoo can scour, the San Francisco-based micro-blogging venture has "no issues with people who want to leave," says spokesman Seth Garrett. "Our research shows that quite often they come back later."
Even tens of thousands of dropouts represent a fallen leaf in the forest of social networkers happily updating their status/thoughts/whereabouts at this very moment.
Facebook dominates that landscape, according to The Nielsen Co. It drew more than 110 million unique visitors in the USA in December, double its 2008 numbers. MySpace was second with nearly 60 million, a 17% drop from the previous year. Twitter pulled in nearly 20 million, and sites such as Classmates and LinkedIn had about 10 million.
Youth still rules in this domain. About 65% of kids 12 to 17 (and 37% of adults ages 18 and up) use a social networking site, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. "For many, the time and energy spent putting content up means it's hard to leave," says Amanda Lenhart, Pew senior research specialist.
That said, the 24/7 tech addiction is causing even diehard social site fans to set limits, says Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist with Intel. In a recent survey on mobile-device etiquette, Bell found that 69% said checking e-mail and sending texts in the company of others was unacceptable.
"This always-on lifestyle is being pushed as desirable, (but) there's a deeply rooted human need to have downtime," says Bell, director of user experience at Intel's Digital Home Group. "Perhaps tuning out of social networking is just a way of recalibrating that need for downtime."
Her recent interviews with users reveal that for some the ideal vacation spot is one without Web access. "We're starting to ask, how does all of this (technology) truly fit into our lives?" she says.
'Push back from this tide of technology'
One antidote to the always-on life is Freedom, free software that disables any Apple computer's Internet access for up to eight hours. About 100,000 Web users have downloaded Freedom since 2008, says Fred Stutzman, a graduate student in information sciences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the program's creator.
"Freedom is a statement that it's OK to push back from this tide of technology and find some space to really think," he says.
People tuning out temporarily eventually could spell trouble for networking sites such as Facebook, says Danah Boyd, social media scholar at Microsoft Research in Boston. "A huge number of early adopters joined Facebook because they felt as though they had to, not because they were passionate about the site," she says.
Boyd cites the early networking site Friendster, which many users ditched for newcomer MySpace. "When the passion was lost, the group walked away. The folks who disengage from Facebook may not be vocal," but they're not to be ignored.
Another frequent user complaint: the barbarians at your virtual gates.
"With social media, there can be this critical moment where strangers take over," says James Fowler, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. "Twitter could face such a danger, because it's this enormous spam machine now."
Mark Dockendorff, 30, an investment adviser in Cincinnati, initially liked the way sites "let you get to know people through their pages, which is so much easier than talking in a bar. But now a lot of my friends are putting their pages on the back burner and just not updating."
As is Dockendorff, who was put off by his mom friending his ex-girlfriend. "Awkward," he says.
A move to Beijing led Larissa Paschyn to leave Facebook when the site was blocked by the Chinese government. Now this "avid user" feels liberated.
"There are many other ways to meet new people and truly experience life," says Paschyn, 24, a television host for CCTV International.
She also has a confession. One of her Facebook guilty pleasures was "checking up on people who were mean to me in school so I could gloat about my life," she says. Being off social sites has "made me a better person and less self-centered."
'It was consuming my life'
When Julian Smith grew frustrated with Facebook, he got silly. His video 25 Things I Hate About Facebook, which has 1.3 million views on YouTube, shows him being literally poked by a friend (No. 2) and lamenting ads for hot singles (No. 21).
"It's the way people are using social networking sites that's lame," says Smith, 22, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. "Sure, it's a great way for me to let people know if I have a new film clip out. But to socialize with friends? Don't think so."
Dustin Blythe was initially elated when he joined Facebook. Then the snowball grew.
"I felt compelled to update my page every hour or so, even if there really was nothing new to write or show," says Blythe, 35, who registers voters in Mishawaka, Ind. "It was like (the sci-fi movie) Logan's Run, trapped in a society I couldn't get out of."
So he went cold turkey. Blythe now blogs instead, updating friends and family on his own timetable. "I have no regrets," he says. "Now I can post what's on my mind without the perceived pressure of keeping up with the Joneses and their BlackBerrys."
Getting off Facebook was tough for Roger Williams, whose love of technology earned him the nickname "Chaplain Geek" at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Stockton, Calif., where he's a grief counselor. But his New Year's resolution was to take a break from social networking.
"I liked that I could reconnect with friends from 30 years ago, but that soon turned into all sorts of people contacting me who I really didn't want to hear from," says Williams, 52, whose alma maters and friends-with-causes hit him up for donations. "I was getting hammered for money. I thought, 'Hey, I'm not a commercial entity.' I felt used."
Another frequent complaint from social networkers is that the variety of sites is overwhelming. Joe Ross recently used Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to wipe out his existence on MySpace, because he felt the site was getting too commercial.
"It was very cool to watch," says Ross, 26, a law student who works for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. But don't write him off the scene yet.
"I'm still on Facebook, and I'm a heavy Twitter user and blogger," he says. "Most of the people I'm friends with are people I wouldn't know if it weren't for social networking."
Ah, that word again. Friends.
Jim Hennessey was an avid social networker, using MySpace and Facebook for social updates, LinkedIn for work contacts, not to mention Meebo, Geni, Jiibe, Flickr and others.
The result? "I was so busy updating my various sites that there wasn't a social desire left in my body," says Hennessy, 42, a marketing consultant from Nashville. "It was getting impersonal."
So much so that when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last year, Hennessey didn't get much support from his online community beyond a few messages. "I knew a lot of people (online), but it was a false sense of comfort," he says.
Though not willing to commit social networking suicide just yet, Hennessey, his cancer in remission, is now more circumspect about its powers and promises. And hungry for the human touch.
"A while back I met up with someone I got to know on Facebook, which was nice," he says. "But when she introduced me, she said, 'This is my friend Jim from Facebook,' as if it were a place.
"I just want to be Jim from Nashville."
