New Yorkers take part in the unfriending of Facebook

Factors like oversharing, boredom and a sense of being removed from actual life is driving some users away from the social network

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By / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Updated: Monday, July 1, 2013, 2:00 AM
 
     
   
     
     
     
     

	SENDER: ?Pesce, Nicole?  SUBJECT: FW: Daily News - I sent this through yesterday and can?t find it in the system; did it get in? Thank you! FACEBOOK QUITTERS: Michael Javakian, 38, from Midtown, has happily quit Facebook. Photo is a handout courtesy of Michael Javakian.

Handout

No computer in sight: Midtown resident Michael Javakian deleted his Facebook account four months ago. “The air smells better,” he says of life now.

Facebook probably doesn’t ‘like’ Michael Javakian’s status. The 38-year-old from midtown deleted his account four months ago — and he has never been happier.

“The air smells better. Roses started to bloom. Everything is brighter in my eyes,” he says.

Javakian first signed up on the site to track down his grammar school classmates, but the constant barrage of event invites, friend requests, messages and memes drove him to sign out for good two years later.

“It was just awful,” he says. “Everyone saying, I’m at the Yankee game, I’m out to dinner at Ben & Jack’s [Steakhouse] — I couldn’t take it.”

And don’t even get him started on the photos. “It was 10 people putting 10 million pictures up,” he groans. “And oh God, the baby pictures. The kids were ugly. It was making me sick.”

Javakian isn’t alone. The social networking behemoth logged a whopping 665 million daily users in early 2013 — up 26% from last year — but as site traffic continues to surge, an increasingly vocal group of disgruntled members has started to deactivate their accounts.

Former Facebook user Ebbin Girauld, of Coney Island, says, " 'Liking' something doesn't do anything."

Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News

Former Facebook user Ebbin Girauld, of Coney Island, says, ” ‘Liking’ something doesn’t do anything.”

It was the endless mundanity that drove off Williamsburg rocker Vanessa Reseland. “If I see one more meme, I might explode,” says Reseland, the front woman of the band Wifey.

She has decided to delete her Facebook page on her birthday on July 3 (can’t hurt to get some cake-day goodwill on the way out) after she failed to find anything genuinely interesting in her newsfeed. “I scrolled for over five minutes, and found nothing that inspired me, entertained me, informed me or bettered me in any way,” she says. “That might have been the last straw.”

Facebook declined to comment for this piece, except to email a statement saying it is “gratified that more than 1 billion people, including enormous numbers of young people, are using Facebook to connect and share.”

But all that sharing has left some users not caring. “Those posts: ‘Like this if you want to cure cancer,’ that was the golden ticket to get the hell out of there,” says Ebbin Girauld, 25, from Coney Island, who closed out her account last September. “ ‘Liking’ something doesn’t do anything.”

The former self-proclaimed “Facebook queen” was signed on 24/7 during her addiction’s peak. “I’d get up in the morning and check it. I’d check in once I got to work. I was always logged in,” she says. “I would read my friends’ updates, and try to outdo them with something funnier. It was very competitive.”

And in the rush to flaunt how much fun they’re having, no one is actually enjoying themselves. Simona Polyakov, a Philadelphia lawyer raised in Queens, realized she’d reached a breaking point when she saw a couple photographing their meals at the table beside her and her boyfriend.

Magazine Peter Feld quit Facebook in 2011 but returned because his work requires "a social media presence."

Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Magazine Peter Feld quit Facebook in 2011 but returned because his work requires “a social media presence.”

“I want to think about enjoying the food, not, oh, what a good picture for Facebook,” she says. “The point should be living your life and sharing it later. It’s turned into living your life by sharing.”

She put herself on a digital diet: logging off from Facebook when she goes out, and staying away from the Web when she’s bored, although she still has a weakness for the Facebook Messenger functions. “I like using Facebook to chat,” she concedes, “but I don’t feel the need to post every little annoying thing that is going on with me.”

Many users also find that quitting Facebook entirely can be as tough as stubbing out cigarettes. Erika Jordan, 23, has tried leaving twice. “I waste too much time on it and I hate it,” she says.

But she keeps relapsing by typing the site’s URL into her browser — and has since reactivated her account. “It’s necessary for networking,” gripes the Greenpoint copywriter. “It is so integral to normalcy right now.”

o Peter Feld, editor of Scooter parenting magazine, returned to Facebook after a six-month hiatus in 2011 — and he claims it’s partly for professional reasons. “I have no choice. I run a magazine that has to have a social media presence,” he says. “It’s like you really can’t exist without it. Facebook has become boring and annoying, but necessary.”

Feld has returned to Facebook on his own terms, however. He stopped posting, except for occasional articles, and no one can tag him in a photo or check him into a place without his permission.

Despite the loss of some members, the social networking site headed by Mark Zuckerberg (above) still has more than a billion users.

ROBERT GALBRAITH/REUTERS

Despite the loss of some members, the social networking site headed by Mark Zuckerberg (above) still has more than a billion users.

He uses Facebook in a separate browser from his other Internet activity so the site can’t track what he’s doing. “I try not to feed the beast, because I think they’re corporate sociopaths,” he says.

Facebook is growing so quicky it doesn’t need to worry about folks like Feld, according to Internet expert and NYU professor Clay Shirky. But if young folks — not disgruntled longtime users — stop logging in, Facebook could go the way of MySpace, the scholar warns.

“Facebook is worried about 15-year-olds who become ambassadors to other kinds of social media,” he says.

But the site doesn’t want to let any of its users go. Although Girauld deactivated her account nine months ago, Facebook is actively trying to lure her back in.

“I get emails once or twice a month saying, ‘You can still log in! Check out what your friends are doing!’ ” she says.

“And I’m like, No! And I send them straight to spam.”

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Comments

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knewtnews4 minutes ago
FB is stupid. I don’t have facebook. hahhahaha. thank god!!.
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Mergatroid696 minutes ago
I’m a very tech savvy person and still have my first IBM PC from the 1980’s in my basement and COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC coding textbooks …that being said, I was never interested in FB and never had a FB account in spite of being pressured to create one …thankfully I have a job/career that does not require incessant FB’ing…
+1
 
ghostcannon23 minutes ago
Michael Javakian: “And oh God, the baby pictures. The kids were ugly. It was making me sick.” Stupid moron….at least show some respect to those friends’ kids….you are so stupid that you could not figure out that FB has settings that can block users, events, messages, etc….

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solidd592 hours ago
Sounds as if some of these people have issues unrelated to FB!
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tigerettee3 hours ago
“The social networking behemoth logged a whopping 665 million daily users in early 2013 — up 26% from last year”

A lot of that is from corporations luring people onto FB. It is amazing how often I now get companies trying to have me sign into their FB page. Really weird. I never used a FB or twitter account and don’t plan to. Normally I love exploring anything related to technology but the whole premise of these sites turned me off from the beginning.

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Mike3 hours ago
Life is not a spectator sport to be experienced through a computer screen; you have to get out into the the world and live it!
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Nosferatu3 hours ago
Facebook is evil.
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O KE3 hours ago
Hmmmm . . . I understand a lot of the reasons stated would make someone quit FB but ugly babies? Maybe HIS babies are ugly LOL
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1 reply
+2
 
ghostcannon21 minutes ago
Agree…
He is a moron….stupid that he didn’t know the security features FB has…
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