I first joined Facebook in 2006 before it was open to the general public. My email address as a teacher involved in higher education got me in. In those initial years, I collected a whole lot of 'friends' that included past students and even people we met during trips or outings. I had hundreds and hundreds of followers. In those days, it was fun and exciting. This screen shot was from June 2010.
By 2018, it had all became a bit too much. I went through the process of deleting my original account and starting again from scratch. I tried keeping up only with folks I actually knew or had known well. That whittled down a whole lot of the unnecessary noise. A part of me still felt as though Facebook was a bit evil and that it had helped to create cracks in the fabric of civil society. I continued my participation with hesitation. This action rewarded me with the chance to keep up with others whom I hold dear. It was never a part of my news gathering process. I eventually deleted all group affiliations as they became irritants. Over time, it became more obligation and much less fun.
Now it's 2025. I think I'm at the point of vastly minimizing my exposure to Facebook. Even after curating a short list of friends, I find the algorithms add tons of advertisements and posts from strangers in order to spur my engagement. Well, it's not working. I am discovering that using the site is no longer a useful part of my daily routine. In fact, it's very often a source of frustration. I wish there were an easy fix to all of this. It would be great to be able to suggest an alternative for those few folks whom I can only contact via my FB account. I can't come up with one though.
My personal online journal isn't going anywhere and I will continue to publish because that's as much for me as for sharing with others. In fact, if you're reading this then you're already there!