Taking a break from social media is progressing as I permanently deactivated my Facebook account today. I know I’m not going to miss it, although I was in a couple of useful groups.

Facebook often gets criticised for the lack of privacy. “If you are not paying for the product, you are the product being sold”, and that is very much true. Facebook gets revenue from advertising. To be able to target ads, they need your data. Whatever you have in your Facebook profile, your friends, everything you have ever posted there or all the websites you ever visited that had a Facebook like button, they will all count. Even if you don’t have a Facebook profile, they will still probably keep a shadow profile of you, based on your phone number, email address or other identifiers they may get from you or people you interact with.

In November, when the US election day arrived, I noticed I was getting anxious. When the result still wasn’t clear in the morning, I decided to take a break from all social media and news. As a result, I had two incredibly productive days at work and I felt so much better. The short break was enough to cure my anxiety but it tends to creep in every now and then, when I spend too much time on social media. By social media I mean mostly Facebook and Twitter.

Sometimes when a man leaves the comfortable surroundings of his own kiez, he might notice that Berlin is actually a very big city.