What's the use of Facebook for an author?

Why I just pulled the plug on the app.

As I sit here in Maine, where we’re buried in snow, an itch appeared. One that compelled me to reexamine the necessity of one of the foundational social media apps of this century—Facebook.

The snowy view from my little porch.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not the nostalgic type. I’ve deleted my Facebook account before. Twice. But this is the first time I opened Facebook with the express intent of having it as another platform to discuss my writing and books in addition to all that other stuff people use the platform for. And it was great, for a while.

New connections with booksellers, librarians, and publishing professionals. Relevant industry groups with information I found helpful. The ability to stalk old partners (kidding).

But here’s the thing, Facebook loves that we’re using it for these purposes. What it also loves, however, is users using it for everything else.

All these tech giants want to be “Everything Apps”. It’s not just Facebook, but also Amazon, for example, that wants you to shop on it, watch content there, and more. And they’re good at keeping your attention, dangerously so. Before long, I was using Facebook for so much more than the original purpose I had in mind, whether selling junk from my home on Marketplace or aimlessly binging Reels first thing in the morning.

That itch I mentioned earlier… it soon grew into an alarm, a warning that something had gone very wrong.

Something had gone very wrong.

I was addicted to checking my profile on the app, and for what purpose? As I considered if my publisher really cared about my presence on this platform, or if all my friends would cease to be a part of my life upon leaving, every reason I had for keeping Facebook quickly fell apart with a little scrutiny.

Of course, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room. . . Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is absolute trash. I don’t need to go into much detail on that, though I’ll speak on it a bit more below.

But if this—truly just the tip of the iceberg—is all you read, I hope it’s a question you begin to ponder.

A question that drives you to act.