Yesterday, a friend sent a post announcing that he was deleting his Facebook account. He suggested keeping in touch by email or phone. The few comments that followed were both understanding and supportive. I guess a lot of people are thinking the same.

For me, my life is pretty much all over social media. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and I have two accounts on Instagram. I post EVERYTHING. And, until I read my friend’s message, I never gave my actions a second thought.

A few years back, Facebook began sending out memories. An old post is selected and you can repost it to your page. The memories are always things that I’ve already forgotten. Once I see them, I remember the moment. I even (sometimes) remember sending the post. It’s just that most of the memories are things that I haven’t thought about … since posting about them.

To be clear, …. I post a lot! If I change around my dorm room, it’s a post. My personal Instagram account has 5,825 post, so far! Taylor Swift (with 180 million followers) has 512 post. Let’s put it this way, McDonalds has 223 post. Starbucks has 22,88. Heck, Kim Kardashian has 5,335. And … she gets paid to post.

I’m a retired academic librarian volunteering with Americorps. How did this happen? Peace Corps service is the blame! When I first served in the 1980s, there was no Internet. You wrote letters home, using pen and paper. When you arrived back to the States, you talked nonstop about being a Peace Corps volunteer. This went on for years!!!!

When I rejoined the Peace Corps, in 2017, I was sent to Armenia. During the welcome orientation, I was given a cell phone and an Internet pod. Turned out, I didn’t really need the pod. My host family had Internet. My third Peace Corps service, in Ethiopia, was the same. I had Internet service, in a town of two thousand residents, at 9228 feet. Everything I wanted to tell someone back home could be posted.

So, the pattern was set. Today, I never use my phone to call friends. I don’t even use text messaging or email. I communicate with friends via social media. I can’t remember the last time that I wrote a letter. Now that I think about it, I can really see why my friend decided to delete his Facebook account.

Could I do that? Delete Facebook? Yes. I could do that, but not Instagram. I’m ahead of Kimmie K and I can’t let her win! —GGT