A life without Meta

May 22, 2026

A while ago I decided to delete my Facebook and Instagram accounts and removed WhatsApp from my smartphone.

After using it for years, Facebook was only showing me ads and things other people liked. Only sometimes I saw an actual post by a “friend” of mine. It wasn’t interesting anymore to scroll through this feed. It was literally a waste of time.

I used Instagram actively as a musician and for music-related content for a while. I followed a lot of local artists and small bands—people I know in person. I posted some updates about my music and concerts as well and rarely published stories. This always felt like so much work and wasn’t easy for me. I’m not the type of person who spontaneously shares a current moment live, talking naturally to the camera without preparation… 🙈

By the way, I didn’t use Instagram on my iPhone but only on my iPad (which means I used a blown up iPhone version of the app 🫠). I didn’t want to find myself wasting time scrolling through feeds and sponsored content. I used the app mindfully for a few minutes at a time and then put it aside again. The user experience of posting stuff was no highlight, of course (because I still made photos and videos with my phone), but that was intentional 🙃.

I had a second (“private”) account to find inspiration about interior design or gardening, which has been fun at times. I really hated all this shiny, happy-life influencer content. Especially when I was struggling with being a mum (no time for myself, exhausting days and nights, sleep deprivation…), I just couldn’t stand looking at these carefree people, who don’t seem to have any problems in life at all. Of course, I know that people only post the good stuff… but still, it’s hard to watch when I’m not in a good mood.

WhatsApp was an app I could avoid for a long time, but at some point I had to install it. Relevant groups or people could not be reached in other messengers, and some friends forgot that something like good old SMS still exists (“oh, I missed your message, I didn’t get a notification”). Luckily, many friends switched to Signal a while ago. Some of them because I asked them to. 🫶 Currently, a mix of Signal, iMessage, SMS, and emails works perfectly fine for me.

Reasons for leaving

The reasons why I left these platforms are different ones, but basically:

  • no relevant content was shown to me anymore
  • everything is full of sponsored content and ads
  • privacy concerns
  • shiny stories about happy lives and a lot of superficiality
  • a growing dislike for big tech companies 🫠

What I’m missing now

I don’t miss the services at all. I’m glad I left these algorithm-driven, endless-scrolling, addictive platforms.

But I miss the people.

What I feel is that many individuals, musicians, and organizations use these platforms as their main and sometimes sole communication channel. One example: a local festival promotes the line-up on Instagram, but their website is still outdated. I can only look at the first few Instagram post previews before I am blocked by a huge “signup now” overlay.

I used Facebook and Instagram mainly to find out what (music) events are coming up nearby. Right now, I have no idea. It’s currently not a problem because I can’t go out anyway (👧👶), but what about next year? 🥲

I get it. Not everyone can or wants to build and maintain a personal website and provide an always up-to-date RSS feed (oh but wouldn’t that be nice?). Some run a regular email newsletter, others don’t — there’s no consistency here for me as a consumer/follower/fan.

Meta’s services are “great”, all people/fans/followers can be reached easily (as long as everyone uses the platforms). Nobody seems to care about the fact that:

  • they are putting all their eggs in one basket and rely on one large US company—when they get locked out of their account, all their content is gone
  • when they use a service that costs nothing, they are the product
  • they are bombarded with ads
  • what they see in these networks is what somebody else (a.k.a. an algorithm) wants them to see
  • there have always been problems with privacy and data protection…

What’s next?

Where do we go from here? Where do I go from here? I honestly don’t know…

At the moment, I stumble across information about events or concerts because I see a poster or friends tell me. Very rarely, I actively look for something. I maintain my own website and collected links to other musicians’ pages, but it’s not very convenient to click through all the links every now and then.

I talked to small local businesses who update their clients via WhatsApp stories and communicate workshops via Facebook. And well, it works. No need to put extra work into a personal website or any other independent channel.

And again, for me as a consumer, it would be great to have all the updates of everyone and everything I’m interested in in one place. Like an RSS feed reader. Or Instagram, because it seems everyone else still uses it 🫠…

What are your experiences? Do you have similar concerns? Do you feel the fear of missing out?