In an earlier post, I discussed why I’m leaving. You can read all about that here.
My two main challenges have been not wanting to lose touch with friends, and a concern about losing any photos or other data.
I started by posting my intentions and my contact info, inviting friends to keep in touch with me. I wasn’t hesitant since my contact info is accessible online through my business, but if I wanted to be more private, I could have asked people to message me privately on the platform.
I then started messaging specific people, to switch my favorite conversations over to text. I am using a strict no-guilt policy! If I missed reaching out to you personally, it’s because I already have your info or I didn’t get to everyone. And I know you can look me up easily :)
I used a word processor to store collected contact info people gave me. I decided not to make a spreadsheet or anything with rules, it is simply a document I can paste any format into. Just in case I need it later. I also input it into my phone (or at least part of it, like the person’s phone number). If I ever do Christmas cards again, I will need to reorganize my address list, but now is not the time.
A side benefit of moving some conversations off Facebook is that we chatted more in depth! This gave me more confidence in my decision. Texting someone is just as easy as using Messenger, but it feels more intentional and it led to getting to know people who I’d “reconnected” with online years before - but our relationships had remained superficial until now. Here’s a nice example of a text conversation:
I created this website so I could have a personal blog - a place to write instead of posting to Facebook. I had already used Squarespace for my business website, so I decided to use that and I chose a template, creating the site as quickly as possible, and not letting myself get mired in the decision making process.
I shared my new blog on Facebook, and tried to collect the blogs of people I know. I still need to decide how to organize them, perhaps just bookmarks in my browser, something simple.
I considered what news and articles I get from Facebook - I become overwhelmed with those, but there ARE some I enjoy or find useful. I decided that my Washington Post subscription will cover me from a paid perspective, and I also use the freebies from the NYT, NPR, etc. For political figures I follow, I just get too MUCH on Facebook. So I’ll just see them in the news, or go to their website to make a donation or buy a t-shirt. Then I can back away and go on with my daily life. Similarly, if I follow a favorite brand… I can find them when I want to buy something. We have really enjoyed getting ads out of our television life by using Netflix and similar services, and I think this is going to be enjoyable too, not seeing ads and marketing posts. (Consumer Reports works great if I want advice!)
The last step was downloading my info from Facebook. I kind of recommend everybody going through this process, even if you are not leaving. It’s interesting to see your information. It took about 15 min to generate my file, and it was 494MB. If I had chosen “high-quality” for the media, it would have been much larger, but I believe I have the original of any photos that need to be hi-res. It’s kind of neat to see all my comments, likes, and posts, but they are separated into category, so if you are wanting to save all the responses on a particular post, you should screenshot that post for yourself before you delete your account. The messenger threads do seem to be saved in order, by person (so you can go back to a messenger conversation later to check what was said).
I hope this was helpful! Have a great Monday.