Editorial In to a lesser degree a decade, Facebook has morphed from Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room project into a global phenomenon where member activity and trends make the evening news.

I joined the site in 2005 when "the new MySpace" needed an academic e-mail address and was mostly populated away fellow techies. At first I resisted the urge to sign since I already had a profile at the rival mixer network, but I eventually caved to the peer pressure on campus; IT was the new cool thing and I wanted to look what all the fuss was about.

The early days of Facebook were much different from now. The land site layout and profile pages were very basic, and the young and reckless didn't take up to worry approximately family members or employers stumbling across their questionable photos.

As the site loosened rank requirements, I initially perceived the expansion as a good thing. I reconnected with childhood friends and senior high classmates, and as a budding lensman, I loved joint photos and receiving feedback from those on my friends leaning.

Only American Samoa Facebook closes in on cardinal trillion active users, its overpowering success is largely why I've decided to end my long-handled-erect relationship with the sociable network. Seven years is a long sentence to maintain whatsoever online account, much less one that demands well-nig each day attention.

Good old Facebook, circa 2008.

Contrary to what some of my friends think, there wasn't one single effect that "set me cancelled" as it were; the decision had been building for a while. I knew in that location was a job when I'd waken apiece morning and instinctively reached for my phone to check the current overnight developments posted to my news feed.

More often than not, whatever I found would put me in a foul mood even before crawling outgoing of bed. Many things annoyed Maine, but the short list includes opinion rants, religious preaching, relationship drama and grammar that would disappoint a for the first time-range instructor.

When I told friends my design to leave the social network, several suggested that I purge my contact name to get rid of some of the nonsensical, but after deleting over 300 people a few months earlier, I knew this wasn't the solution. After totally, the fact that I even had over 600 "friends" is funny. Others recommended to hide feeds from people that frequently annoyed Maine, but again, that would only mask the true issue: I had grown tired of Facebook.

The social meshwork has been commercialized and ruined away its own celebrity. The decoy of rekindling old friendships has long ago passed. I've always hung out with a good-knit mathematical group, so I knew those mass would still be around even if my profile wasn't.

I pulled the plug happening my account a few weeks ago and pursual a brief sense of liberation, I quickly faced the consequences of my conclusion.

Spotify forces you to have a Facebook explanation if you want to utilisation the service.

I didn't remember that Spotify required Facebook and contempt existence a salaried subscriber, I was instantly latched out of my account. I had grown loving of the streaming euphony service and wasn't thrilled with the idea of losing the playlist I had built over the past twelvemonth.

I too quickly realised that I would no longer be capable to watch some MMA fights on Facebook. The UFC streams select overture matches hold up Facebook before the chief card airs through diverse television outlets. Facebook is the only way to watch these fights so once again, I was missing out on early forms of entertainment simply because I didn't want a Facebook account.

It seemed my only options were to cancel my Spotify membership and forgo watching UFC prelims operating theatre create a dummy Facebook account without a public profile -- I chose the latter.

I linked Spotify to my dummy Facebook account but I lost approach to the coveted play list from my old account. I emailed Spotify's tech livelihood but as anticipated, they didn't reply. It was only after I reached verboten using my press credentials that I accepted aid.

Spotify managed to carry-over my playlist from my old report to the new dummy account and the service supplied me with a one-month premium rank encode since I just paid for a sounding calendar month's service before disabling my Facebook account.

I've been "off grid" as we say for few weeks now and it's possibly ace of the best decisions I've made in a weeklong time. Not having to whole lot with altogether the riff raff that comes with Facebook is refreshing. Few minutes checking Facebook all few hours really add up concluded the course of a Day -- or seven years.

I wear't feel ilk I've missed out on anything worthy since closing my account. Away of a few shut down friends and family members, I incertitude most of the 300+ people on my friends name volition even notice I'm gone. It shows how disconnected we all are in such a connected populace.

Atomic number 3 with any addiction, IT can take some clock to break the drug abuse. I've found myself senselessly navigating my bookmarks before snapping spine to world and realizing Facebook is no more thirster in that location. I likewise instinctively reached for my phone aft waking in the lead the first few days to check my news feed in, getting as far as the "social" folder before realizing it was all for aught.

If you've been on the fence about dropping your Facebook account, I'd inspire you to give it a whirl and get wind if you can last without it. After all, it's like business enterprise advisor Dave Ramsey says: if you don't comparable existence out of debt, you can ever go right endorse into debt tomorrow. The same holds true for Facebook.