Since things have started changing so dramatically with Facebook in the last few weeks, I’ve thought a lot about the privacy of my personal data. Do I really want pictures, videos, links to articles I read, comments made to friends, foursquare checkins, etc stored on the internet forever? Who knows how that data will some day be used – whether maliciously or just for simple demographic profiles for advertisers? That got me thinking – what do I get out of social media? Does it really enhance my day or is it just a giant time suck. I plan to find out.

Over the last 2-3 years I have been heavily involved on Twitter (almost 5000 tweets), an active participant on Facebook, and recently have started using Foursquare to check in at all the places I go to around town, and even while out of town. Most of the apps on my iphone have something to do with a social media service of some kind. I have decided that for the next 2 weeks I’m going to give myself a no-social-media shock and completely drop it all – cold turkey.

Here’s my forecast for what I think will happen after 2 weeks:

With Twitter, I have previously justified it’s use to myself as saying it’s more business than social – since I follow many of the people/businesses I do, or want to do, business with. I have learned new things by reading articles and watching videos people have tweeted about so my assumption is that I will probably return to using Twitter. There is a social side to Twitter though which can make it either interesting or a waste of time.

I don’t think I’ll miss foursquare at all. Checking in everywhere while I’m running around town is at best a serendipitous way to run into friends that I otherwise wouldn’t have known they were at the same place as I. At worst, it tells people that I’m anywhere else except for being home. If I were a person interested in robbing my house, that is information I would love to have. Foursquare has turned me on to specials at bars and restaurants while I’ve been traveling out of town, and that has been nice. All in all, I don’t think I’ll go back to using it.

Facebook puzzles me at the moment. My assumption is that I will probably delete my account at the end of 2 weeks – just in time for this: Quit FaceBook Day. The #1 reason I haven’t shut down my account prior to now is because it allows for damage control. If someone posts an old picture from college…that I wouldn’t want shown to everyone…I can un-tag myself and ask them to remove it. If I hadn’t been on Facebook, I would never have known the picture was up until a friend made it a point to tell me.

The only other reason my Facebook account is still active is for the pure social nature of the site. If I care to, I can view other people’s profiles and see what they’ve been up to. But is that really social? Seems like a social interaction would be picking up the phone and calling that person to catch up. Not creeping through their pics and reading their wall to wall posts with one of their friends. All of my true friends, and all of my family, have my phone number, email address and know where I live. I’d much rather catch up with them in person or over the phone than in a one-sided creep-a-thon.

Then again, what if I wake up some day and decide, “I really want to get in touch with that one person I was really good friends with in the 2nd grade.” Or, “I lost So-and-so’s contact info and I’ll be traveling through their area next week.” Having a Facebook account would make getting in contact with those people really simple. I guess we’ll see how I feel about it all after 2 weeks of social media abstinence.

Here are my rules:
No opening any social media applications on my iphone or laptop. No visiting any social media site or opening any links in emails, or anything else, that resolve to a social media site. All social media notifications on my iphone must be turned off.

I’ll post the results on Friday, May 28. See you in 2 weeks!