Help I want to come off Facebook but don't at the same time

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OK I know I've talked about coming off Facebook a few times here but I still can't make up my mind.

Yes I let myself get sucked into Facebook, and now I'm too addicted, as if it's become part of my life. OK I will write all the bad points and the good points about staying on it.

(Good points)
I love the quizzes. It's just a bit of fun and I feel it's a good way to express myself instead of writing posts or taking selfies. So I will miss those.
I like to keep up with gossip without being too personal. Like I don't like to interfere by texting people asking for gossip, so by looking at Facebook I often pick up little gossip things among people that I know that I'm not best friends with or anything but I still know them.
I do feel connected when on Facebook. I feel connected to the social world, and that seems to be important to me. It's like being able to connect with the social world without being under too much pressure.
I will lose all my contact and then might regret it a few months later.

(Bad points)
It seems to make me feel depressed. Like for my birthday I only got 9 people write ''happy birthday'' on my timeline, while everybody else gets at least more than 15. My Aspie friend (who struggles socially more so than me) got 18 ''happy birthday's'' on her timeline on her birthday. I thought ''who the hell gets 9?''
Facebook is like a popularity thing. I feel that if I don't get enough likes or comments, people will think I'm a loner who nobody cares about. And no I don't have a load of strangers on Facebook. I have work colleagues, family, and people I have met like at my voluntary job, etc. And yes there are nice people who did wish me a happy birthday, but I didn't get as much as everyone else gets - and I always wish others a happy birthday on their timeline when it's their birthday.
Seeing how others, even Aspies, get more noticed than I, it makes me feel unimportant and depressed, and if I just come off Facebook completely I wouldn't have to care. But then I will miss all the good points. I don't know what's best.

In actuality you cannot actually come off of facebook....you're profile would still be there if you log in, at least that is the last I heard is you cannot actually delete your profile but can deactivate it, simply logging in re-activates it. You can do that and take a break from it or never log in again if you want...but then you miss out on those things you like about it. But yeah its probably not that people think you're a loser no one cares about....just a matter of the more followers/friends someone has on their list the more attention they will get not really a personal thing. I mean I really don't get a lot of comments or 'happy birthdays' but not really jealous of others who get more since its just the internet....I think the main way to get more attention is to post more crap, if you mostly take quizzes and play games for instance you'd get less, if you start taking a bunch of selfies and post a bunch of random stuff all the time your page would get more views. I personally cannot be bothered to put too much effort into getting more views.

My brother and his friend are pretty well known face-book wise but honestly does not seem that great to have that much facebook fame....then you got a bunch of people watching everything you do on there, sometimes quite awkward comments from stalkerish people and oh yeah and fake profiles of you....this happens a lot to those two so there are some downsides to having more popularity on facebook from what I have seen. More attention also comes with more negative attention.

Well I think you can permanently delete your account for good but it takes up to 14 days or something like that. Quitting Facebook would be a lot easier if your account just permanently deleted there and then, and then you can move on. But when it's still possible to log back into your account within 14 days, it makes it so hard to move on. Especially when you spend an awful lot of time on the internet like me, then it is too easy to give in and log back into Facebook before it's ''too late''. I know Facebook does that on purpose.

I only joined Facebook to fit in with a couple of friends I used to have. I signed up for Facebook and I caught up with a lot of people and it felt like a good experience for me. Now I don't even see or hear from those couple of friends any more, even though they're still floating about on my Facebook, they don't really talk to me any more, and they didn't answer my last message so I didn't message them again because I worried I might be pestering them or something.

If you like gossip and care about getting the happy birthday posts, seems like it's a good place for you. Why not just log on less often?

I found a good site on the internet about how to come off Facebook. I know how to delete my account, but it's the addiction what is hard to tackle. I know it's easy for some people to say to just come off it, but those people don't know how hard it is for someone who has become addicted. In this interesting article I read about coming off Facebook, it said first to remove all your photos from Facebook. That would be like a first step. Then you can deactivate your account, and won't have the urge to log back on again because you know you have removed all your photos, including your profile picture and everything. Then you can delete your account for good. That is a good idea.

It's just that I have become a little competitive. This morning I wrote ''Merry Christmas To All My Friends And Family xx'' on my timeline, which is what most people put this time of the year. But I only got two likes; one like was from a possible Aspie friend of mine who doesn't have many other friends, and the other one was from a relative of mine. But when other people wrote ''Merry Christmas'' posts, they got, like, five likes and some comments. So I don't see the point in being on Facebook any more. I connect with those people on Facebook better in real life than I do on Facebook.

I was going to write what most other people wrote today, which is "had a nice Christmas day, had roast beef or turkey, and lovely to see the family..." etc etc. But I don't see the point in me putting that because, although I had a nice day today with my family and my boyfriend came round and everything, I just know that nobody will like or comment me.

I don't know if everybody's just ignoring me, or if facebook isn't as easy to use as I think it is. I think people have these facebook groups or whatever it is. I just have it the simple way; everybody's stuff shows up on my newsfeed, and I scroll down a little and I do like and comment on their stuff sometimes.

Some people advise me to write more mundane stuff like "I'm eating a sandwich" and then I'll get likes apparently, but that does not work at all for me. Then some people tell me to write more interesting stuff like "been to see my friend Jane Smith today" or "had a lovely day at the pier with my partner", but that doesn't work for me either. When it was my boyfriends birthday the other week I posted some pictures of us having a meal in a pub, but nobody liked that either. I just basically post stuff what the majority of facebook users post, but I just get ignored. And the more hurt I feel about it, the more I think I will find it easy to quit.

I stopped using facebook for a while -- just stopped getting on... first was about a year stretch then I started using it because I felt a sort of "righteous" need to use the platform to help make people aware of serious issues that they can get involved with in their daily lifestyle choices (primarily problems with industrial food production systems and some other more political-global policy stuff)... Nobody ever cared... Well maybe a few but they weren't the ones that needed to know about that stuff --

Then I'd see someone post the 700th picture of their baby or a stupid cat meme and get about 120 "likes"... This would bug me... It really pushed the old "misanthrope" button deep in my psyche... One push for disappointment that no one cared about something more important than silly "feel-good" stuff, the second push for my own guilt about actually giving a sh*t about how people were responding to me on facebook.


So I deleted it earlier this year after a second stretch of non-use. Haven't looked back. Feel F*CKING GREAT ABOUT IT!

There's endless articles and posts out there about people feeling happier without it. Just kill the damn thing.

Since then I have started doing "microbiz" or "nanobiz" projects and have sometimes met people that want to network with it ("it has a billion people etc etc!") but squashed that BS when I read a statistical article about how much people actually see what you share: facebook's ever-changing algorithms require you spend money to get things seen in the tide of the feed... Nobody is going to see your stuff... Its gone in moments and facebook doesn't care... pay money or shut up.

More recently I found this site called "tsu" (https://www.tsu.co/#) which is a social-network that flips facebook's profit model on its head and pays the USER for the content they generate and the attention it gets from others. It may never become anything but I think I will join if I want a social network and try and pull some people over from facebook. I was there my freshman year of college when it was just a thing for college students and you needed a verifiable school-administered email address to become part of it... I've watched it morph and change like some chimeric serpent and will be happy to live to the day where it crumbles.... like old Rome... hahaha couldn't resist some visual symbolism there.

Good luck, delete your face book