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Why I Deactivated1 My Facebook Account
美国的脸书、推特，中国的微博、微信……各类社交媒体层出不穷。随着社交平台的发展，它们也从原本与亲朋好友沟通的工具变成了展示自己的平台。亲友相聚时最主要的事已不再是闲谈交流，而是以“保存美好回忆”之美名，低头沉迷于拍照、上传和分享。你是否也正沉溺其中，又是否曾想到过离开呢？
In 2004， I began my first year of college， which was also the birth year of Facebook.
Everything changed when Facebook arrived. Pictures could be shared and tagged； you could be Googled， and you could easily check up on an ex.2 （Remember the days of never knowing what his new girlfriend looked like？ Yeah， me either.）
Unlike today， Facebook， in its simplest form， was a way to connect you to your classmates and other fellow college students. I used Facebook to check if the cute guy I met was “in a relationship3.” I used it to group chat with classmates about an upcoming study group or to catch the homework I missed if I was absent from4 class that day.
Before Facebook was Facebook it was “The Facebook.” I recall typing into my computer （yes， there was no mobile site because phones hadn’t become “smart” just yet）， www.thefacebook.com. You needed college email address to even join. Before the days of parents “friending” you， Facebook had a targeted purpose：5 to connect you to real people. Now， 11 years later， I no longer have a Facebook account， and I haven’t logged in since 2011.
Facebook and I had a good run， but I was turned off when it stopped being a place to chat with people I knew and went to class with， and turned into a world of self-absorption， a virtual soapbox for people to complain about very trivial things and a place to post uneducated comments on religion and politics.6 From what I hear now， a person’s news feed no longer even resembles what it once was， and is now a hub of news links and ads with 751 of your closest “friends” telling you it is， in fact， snowing outside （in case you are in a windowless bunker somewhere）.7
It was my personal preference to remove myself. I quietly deactivated my account and haven’t looked back since. I had to disconnect from this virtual world that was always connecting. You would have thought I had decided to become a recluse8 at the time I shut down my account.
I would be out and friends would complain they could not “check me in” to the bar or movies or restaurant we were frequenting9. They were genuinely upset they couldn’t tag me on the Internet， even though I was still right beside them. I began to wonder， if a memory is made， and a smartphone isn’t there to capture10 it， does the memory exist？
美国的脸书、推特，中国的微博、微信……各类社交媒体层出不穷。随着社交平台的发展，它们也从原本与亲朋好友沟通的工具变成了展示自己的平台。亲友相聚时最主要的事已不再是闲谈交流，而是以“保存美好回忆”之美名，低头沉迷于拍照、上传和分享。你是否也正沉溺其中，又是否曾想到过离开呢？
In 2004， I began my first year of college， which was also the birth year of Facebook.
Everything changed when Facebook arrived. Pictures could be shared and tagged； you could be Googled， and you could easily check up on an ex.2 （Remember the days of never knowing what his new girlfriend looked like？ Yeah， me either.）
Unlike today， Facebook， in its simplest form， was a way to connect you to your classmates and other fellow college students. I used Facebook to check if the cute guy I met was “in a relationship3.” I used it to group chat with classmates about an upcoming study group or to catch the homework I missed if I was absent from4 class that day.
Before Facebook was Facebook it was “The Facebook.” I recall typing into my computer （yes， there was no mobile site because phones hadn’t become “smart” just yet）， www.thefacebook.com. You needed college email address to even join. Before the days of parents “friending” you， Facebook had a targeted purpose：5 to connect you to real people. Now， 11 years later， I no longer have a Facebook account， and I haven’t logged in since 2011.
Facebook and I had a good run， but I was turned off when it stopped being a place to chat with people I knew and went to class with， and turned into a world of self-absorption， a virtual soapbox for people to complain about very trivial things and a place to post uneducated comments on religion and politics.6 From what I hear now， a person’s news feed no longer even resembles what it once was， and is now a hub of news links and ads with 751 of your closest “friends” telling you it is， in fact， snowing outside （in case you are in a windowless bunker somewhere）.7
It was my personal preference to remove myself. I quietly deactivated my account and haven’t looked back since. I had to disconnect from this virtual world that was always connecting. You would have thought I had decided to become a recluse8 at the time I shut down my account.
I would be out and friends would complain they could not “check me in” to the bar or movies or restaurant we were frequenting9. They were genuinely upset they couldn’t tag me on the Internet， even though I was still right beside them. I began to wonder， if a memory is made， and a smartphone isn’t there to capture10 it， does the memory exist？