Call to Action: It’s Time to Break Up with Meta
It’s time to break up with Meta.
Yes, I understand entire businesses and livelihoods have been “made” on these platforms. Yes, I understand it’s not a simple request. Yes, I understand it can’t happen overnight. Yes, I understand many folks “only” use it socially or for family. Yes, I understand in some cases social media has saved a life or amplified a cause. Yes, I have personally benefited from and taught others best practices for social media. Yes and yes and yes and YET…
…this is 2025. There are other ways to connect, be inspired, share, build a business, connect with an audience, and see those latest family photos.
Not only do Facebook and Instagram users work without pay, their content and audiences are turned into data that further perpetuate sameness, gatekeeping, and exclusion; risk cultural crisis due to misinformation; and contribute to climate change (AI isn’t “in the cloud,” peeps), among many other far-reaching, life threatening impacts.
By now you might be ready to break up with me, not social media. You might even notice I still have social media handles to protect my name. Stay with me here because I’m going to try to come full circle and let us land back in the arms of Roy’s possible “other world.”
The most succinct way I can think to tell you that you have been working for free for Facebook and Instagram, which are manipulating and harming humanity, is to quote Tara McMullin in her essay “Wait, I Think You’re Platform-Pilled.” In addition to the links that I’ve provided, here’s how McMullin explains it:
“…platforms perpetuate their own staying power and keep users stuck in an endless cycle of self-presentation. Instead of working to create something bigger or beyond myself, I become a belabored self…But even the remarkable content that gets caught up in an algorithm’s net doesn’t necessarily tell you what your followers want from you. It tells you what the platform wants from you. It doesn’t tell you what customers might buy. It tells you what labor the platform will “compensate” you for… Platforms sell themselves as places for us to connect, express ourselves, and share our creative work with the world. And it all sounds really good. In fact, here’s how Instagram positions itself:
Be creative to connect your world
There are so many ways to express yourself on Instagram
An everyday glimpse into what makes you, 100% you
Be yourself and the fans will follow
Unfortunately, none of that is true. And that’s because platforms don’t (really, can’t) support creative work. They support work that’s legible to the algorithm, and that work starts to look and feel the same…You might be creating work for Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, but it’s not creative in the sense that you made something new(ish). You’re creating work in the sense that you’re working.”
How to do this? You can deactivate, archive, delete – you name it – and here’s how. And if you don’t want to do it, let these folks do it for you. There are options to go part way or whole-hog.
That one Facebook Group that provides you with legit helpful professional ties? Keep your login and only go to that space when you need it (and stop feeding the beast with posts). Those international friends with no other consistent way to connect to you? Move them to secure messaging on WhatsApp, or create a private (still not private, though) group just for them (and stop feeding the beast with posts). This is not about being morally perfect (impossible); it’s about the accumulation of vigorous, positive action and small changes. It’s about seeing our interconnectivity and owning our place within it and our impact throughout it.
What’s going to happen once social media is gone from your life, or in the very least, muted/mitigated/paused/blocked? I’ll turn to Roy again, and that other world that’s possible…one that is quiet enough for us to “hear her breathing.” In that world, which is already seeded, the more frequently and consistently we prioritize justice, the closer we will get to remembering we are not separate from this Earth, but of it.
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