In today’s coffee break -- pulling the plug on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, and Twitter/X

My enjoyment of social media has just gone through the floor for the last few years, and it's gotten worse. I don't feel like I'm serving myself by staying in that environment. I joined Facebook and Twitter back in 2009. At that time, I was going through a pretty serious health crisis and it felt good. To be in a place where I could actually reconnect with people going all the way back to my elementary school days. It was fun to be there and you could count on that if you posted something that a good number of your people following you would see it.

I want to say also it hasn't been easy to get to this point to pull the plug. I've had a lot of value over the years from from Facebook and Instagram. Just in terms of making connections there. Now every time that I've thought about leaving. I've had to weigh what makes it worth staying, and I have to be honest with you that it's just gotten worse and worse over the years. For every for every friend’s post that I see. I'll see ten other posts that I didn't subscribe to. The algorithm just continues to feed me things that I didn't sign up for, and I just don't want to do that anymore

I do plan on doing a little bit more direct emailing. I'm going to continue to make videos and a podcast. And I'll continue to show up on LinkedIn on occasion. One of the things that I also intend to do is to spend more time reading actual books. I intend also to look at the quality of what I post online, more so than the quantity of what I post online. So it may be that I only post a few times a year from here on out. But I really want to make sure that what I'm putting up there isn't. Just some AI generated crap. I want it to be helpful. Thoughtful. I want it to be meaningful to me at least.

If you have my e-mail, send me a note. If you don't have my e-mail, there is a contact form on my blog and you're welcome to use. Find me the old fashioned way. I already feel better. I already feel like that I have some time back. I think that the quality of my life is going to improve dramatically from this decision and I'm going to encourage you to think about even just giving yourself a break from it for a little while and see what the difference is.

There are some people that are going to say, am I worried about what it's going to do to my business? I haven't seen any real benefit to my business in a long time and have been very inactive in terms of promoting my business in social media. I found that there are other ways that are much more effective. I don't have a huge business to promote. I only take a few clients at a time, and I don't really do a lot of other things other than maybe release the occasional blog or podcast or video. So I don't feel like that my business is going to suffer at all, in fact. It may actually improve. Take good care. See you here on the YouTube.

Chapters

00:00:00 Getting ready to pull the plug on Meta and X.

00:01:26 It isn’t getting better.

00:02:39 What to do with 16 years of stuff?

00:04:28 YouTube is still where I'm going to be spending a lot of my time.

00:05:05 Weighing the decision to stay or go.

00:06:49 Making online connections more meaningful.

00:07:30 Reading actual books.

00:08:38 If you have my e-mail, send me a note.

00:08:49 If you don't have my e-mail, there is a contact form on my blog.

00:09:20 I already feel better.

00:10:05 What about my business?

00:11:06 Revisiting an old New Year's resolution.