Paring Down Your Social Media Presence

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Do you have a social media presence that is gathering cobwebs and making it hard for you to sleep at night?  Okay, maybe you’re not losing sleep over it, but it’s on your mind or somehow making you feel guilty?

Here is a terrific website that takes you directly to the page you need to delete your presence on that particular platform: http://justdelete.me/  . The site bills itself as “A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services.”

I set up, with the best intentions, a Facebook profile for a pen name in 2009 or early 2010.  I can say now that it was a tremendous mistake.  I already knew that I didn’t enjoy spending time on Facebook (I had a personal profile on the site).  Plus, I soon set up a page for myself on Facebook under my real name.  I simply couldn’t keep up with several Facebook profiles on top of maintaining a presence on Twitter, my blog,  Goodreads, LinkedIn, and Google Plus, among other places.

Because I was so rarely on the pen name Facebook profile, I missed a lot.  Readers would write on my wall, asking about upcoming releases.  They’d message me.  I was getting so many notifications from Facebook on the three profiles that many times these important communications from readers would get lost in the shuffle.

I’d sign in every couple of months to find that I had 20 or more friend requests or messages. Since I’m someone who usually stays on top of communications from readers, this stressed me out.

And yet!  I continued to hang onto the account.  That’s mainly because I felt my author page on Facebook was more for writers than for readers.

I finally, a week ago, sat down and really considered the issue.  Of course people were trying to communicate with me on that neglected profile.  That’s because I wasn’t trying to shift them somewhere else.  I realized the profile had been a continual problem from the start and it needed to be deleted.

There was a real sense of relief after I received this hardly earth-shattering revelation.  I immediately logged into the account, winced at all the missed friend requests, etc., and asked readers to like my page or follow me on Instagram (which I’m developing as a place where I can interact with readers).  I had a good response to this request and, several days later, I took steps to delete the account.

Specifically for Facebook:
From Facebook:
To deactivate your account:


Click the account menu at the top right of any Facebook page.
Select Settings.
Click Security in the left column.
Choose Deactivate your account then follow the steps to confirm.

Or, to delete (again, from Facebook):

“If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content or information you have added.

If you would still like your account deleted, click “Delete My Account”.”

Do you have a neglected social media platform that makes you feel guilty? How thin are you stretched online?

Reduce stress by paring down your social media presence:
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