Facebook Archives - Elizabeth Maria Naranjo

Posted on December 5, 2017 ·

For nearly a decade, my memories were kept on Facebook. I bet yours are there too—on Facebook, on Instagram, somewhere online, or on a screen anyway. Or maybe you’re better organized than I am and you’ve had your pictures printed and put into photo albums over the years, actual photo albums that you can hold in your hands and page through. Those are important; growing up, I never tired of looking through our family photo albums.

I left Facebook a year and a half ago, but I never deleted my account. It was like a safe in a dark closet, hidden and storing many of my favorite moments from 2009 to 2016—my wedding day, my daughter’s first piano recital, my son’s first day of kindergarten, the day I became a published author. Sometimes I’d think, I have to log back on and download my history, but it didn’t seem too urgent, or maybe I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to log back off.

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time. I reactivated my account and within minutes had my entire history in a zip file. I copied the file to a flash drive and to my daughter’s laptop, just in case, and then settled in to revisit the past.

But it was all in pieces. The photos were in one folder, status updates in another, and no comments to be found. Even if I knew how to piece it all back together so it resembled my old Timeline, it would still be on a screen, and I wanted it in print. Surely there was a company out there who did that?

There is. The company is called My Social Book, and the book they put together for me is everything I’d hoped for. Not only does it include photographs with dates and captions, but all of my status updates with everyone’s comments, and even my comments to their comments (and emojis!).

I was a pretty conservative user, so my entire seven years of activity on Facebook amounted to only 344 pages and $88. When you connect My Social Book to your account, you’ll know almost instantly how many status updates and photos you’ve posted since joining, and how many pages that generates. You can choose what goes into your book, or you can just include everything. There wasn’t anything I regretted posting or that I wouldn’t want my children to see, so I opted for the latter. But if there are moments you’d rather not revisit, they’d be easy to filter out; the site is very user-friendly.

You also choose your cover. I picked a simple design, displaying the background and profile picture I’d used for years, so that looking at my cover is just like looking at my old Timeline, which is sweetly nostalgic. The entire process is incredibly easy; it took fifteen minutes, and within 2 weeks I had my book, and with it, the sense of relief at owning a print copy of these photos and memories being stored on a website that I have no control over. I really recommend doing this (it works for Instagram as well).

Here are some pictures of my social book. I am thrilled with the results–paging through it makes me inordinately happy, and I love that my family has these snapshots of our life at their fingertips. The only thing I noticed missing were status updates with links, but the more personal moments were good enough for me.

Each section begins with the most popular post for that time period.

How status updates with comments (and comments on comments) look.

How photo albums look.

Note: I wanted to get my Social Book ordered right away, so I didn’t play around much on the site or bother looking for discounts. I think you could definitely find a promo and save a few bucks on your order. And I’m sure there are lots of great features to customize your book. If you decide to order one, let me know how it turns out!

A Year Without Facebook

Posted on May 11, 2017 ·

Image from Flickr by benstein

Last May, with a deep sense of relief, I quietly deactivated my Facebook account. Since that day one year ago, I have not logged back on. This is not a self-congratulatory post; I’m writing it because I know many people are overwhelmed with Facebook and have considered quitting it for good too, and if you’re one of them, I want to help if I can.

If you absolutely love Facebook or have never considered walking away because it’s a great way to stay connected to distant family and old friends or you need it for your job or you are too involved with groups that only operate there etc., it’s fine. You don’t need to justify that to anyone. This post isn’t for you.

If, however, you often find yourself weighing the pros and cons of the site and wondering if you could do without it because most of the time you actually hate it or you hate the way you feel about yourself and/or people you like/love when spending time on it, this post is for you.

Here’s what to expect when you break up with Facebook:

At first it will be surprisingly easy, the way quitting most addictions is easier in the first few days when your resolve is strong. And then it will get harder, because the new quiet that was such a luxury begins to feel a little lonely. You wonder what you’re missing. You wonder if you’ve made a mistake. This feeling comes and goes, but—I promise—eventually it stays gone.

At first you’ll find you have so much more time to do the things you love—reading, crafting, taking long walks in the evening—and then something else will start to creep into those moments, like another social media site or television or just the Internet itself. You’ll have to work to stay mindful and protect that time, but it will never be as hard as it was before.

At first you might believe that all your “true” friendships will continue on a regular basis once you ditch Facebook. They won’t. Not all of them. People are busy and you’re going to lose touch with some of them, and this doesn’t mean they’re not real friends. They’d probably be there for you if you really needed them, but not everyone is the kind of friend you’ll go to lunch with once a week to make up for the fact that you’re no longer interacting daily on Facebook. This is fine.

Eventually you’ll feel immense relief at all the things you did miss out on, because you’ll realize they’re not the important things. You’ll learn to like people again because you no longer know everything about them, nor do you feel obligated to know. You’ll feel so much better about yourself because of the fact you feel better about others.

You’ll realize you’re setting a good example for your kids by cutting your screen time and reclaiming some of your privacy, and you’ll be doing them a favor by giving them back some of their privacy too. You’ll concentrate better. You’ll learn again to treasure some memories just for yourself.

I still miss Facebook sometimes. I miss sharing funny and sweet moments from my life with others not in my immediate family. I miss looking back through years of memories the way I’d page through an old photo album. I miss those few dozen or so friends whose posts always made me smile, or laugh, or think about something in a different way. Some of them are people who I connect with in real life, some are on Twitter.

And for those I lost a connection with, I have to weigh that admittedly sad loss against the memories of the constant flood of memes and outrage and racism and politics and fake news and conspiracy theories and oversharing and bickering and clickbait and ugliness and the flat-out sadness of it all. Is it worth it? For me, it was not. I hope, if you’re struggling with the decision, I’ve made it a little easier one way or the other for you to decide whether it’s worth it to you.