As of December 6, I no longer have a Facebook account. It’s been quite an odyssey, but I’m thrilled to finally be done with it. Honestly, it shouldn’t have been this hard.
A Little History of My Facebook Use
I’ve been on Facebook for a long time. In fact, I had an account before I was technically old enough to have one. It was a handy tool during my time overseas, and later, it helped me stay in touch with friends I’d met along the way. Back then, Facebook was fun—a place to catch random updates from friends scattered across the globe.
But that hasn’t been true for a long time.
For years, Facebook has faced waves of criticism on multiple fronts, much of it justified. Some complaints may have been overblown, but occasionally, Facebook made changes in response.
Despite all this, I never joined the wave of people deleting their accounts. Instead, I kept mine, thinking it was better to control my profile—even if I rarely logged in. Over time, though, I became more disillusioned with social media as a whole.
There wasn’t a single moment that made me decide to quit; it was a buildup of influences. One of the final straws? The reelection of Donald Trump.
Deleting My Facebook Account
As I’ve written before, I’ve tried to delete my Facebook account in the past but couldn’t, for reasons I still don’t fully understand. I have my theories, of course.
This time, the real catalyst was a desire to distance myself from most social media. I’m still semi-active on Strava and Mastodon, and I’ll continue writing this blog1. But overall, I think social media, as we currently use it, isn’t great for society—or for individuals2.
Deleting my account wasn’t straightforward. I suspect the turning point was deleting the Facebook page linked to my account. This step wasn’t documented anywhere, but it’s my best guess. Once I did that, I could access the account deletion link through the help portal and finally complete the process. Facebook even sent me a confirmation email.
Of course, it shouldn’t be this difficult. The error messages were vague, and Facebook’s support options were nonexistent. For a company of this size, that feels almost intentional. I know Facebook has the technical ability to make this process user-friendly—the question is whether they want to.
Long story short, I did it. My Facebook account is gone. But wow, was it more challenging than it needed to be!