Life Deleted By Orli Katz CH
(Appeared in Binah Magazine 2016)

Recently, I made a life-altering decision. I decided to erase myself.
Despite all of my lofty justifications, I squirmed inwardly each time I engaged in it. It was more than the fact that it smacked of mutual narcissism. Something more nebulous, like lashon hara roulette, dogged my conscience. Though each week I filled myself to the brim with the blissful, halcyon images on my screen and posted cheerful messages, it often left me feeling slightly sullied and wrung out, like a filthy cleaning rag that’s been discarded and flung aside. Each time I plugged in, I fell a little deeper, a bit farther, until the once innocent pastime became almost an addiction, insidiously creeping its way into my private life. It suddenly occurred to me one night that I was spending more time posting staged photos of my children and commenting on other people’s lives than engaging my own family in meaningful dialogue during dinner time. How had this even happened?
A few months later, an insidious study, conducted by Cornell University, helped me muster up the necessary courage to break the addictive pattern. And I did. I finally did it.
I permanently deleted my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
“That’s it?” you must be thinking. “What’s so hard about deleting a silly social media account? Posting photos is not an addiction!” Recent studies, however, suggest otherwise, with Facebook cravings often superseding those of even tobacco and alcohol, according to a study by Hofmann and colleagues (2012).
Those of you who are blessedly unfamiliar with social media cannot even begin to fathom the difficulty of my decision. But the rest of you, along with the over 70 percent of adults in the United States who regularly use Facebook, understand my challenge all too well.
For the uninitiated, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are social media websites that enable people across the globe to instantly connect with friends and family through the Internet. Have you ever wondered what happened to the super-nice roommate you had in Sem? Now you can find her, shmooze electronically (for free!), and even see pictures of her beautiful family. Are you curious about what’s going on in the community today — who’s moving in, who has recently switched jobs, who just had a new baby? Now that information is instantly at your fingertips, updated hourly!
For six whole years, the alternate reality and pixilated images of Facebook were an integral part of my life. I had a network of hundreds of people with whom I was connected; former classmates, community members, acquaintances, and a hodgepodge of random people whom I vaguely recognized. These were my “friends.” Once a week (I was very disciplined about my usage in the beginning), I would eagerly log on to Facebook and scroll through the week’s most recent posts. Oh wow, Sarah finally had her baby; mazel tov. Oh no! The Stein’s just had their car broken into again. :o( Oooh, Tzivi just posted pics from her Miami vacation, what a magnificent sunset!
As I scrolled idly through hundreds of posts, I’d attach sweet, inconsequential comments (only positive ones, of course) to the pictures that I found most interesting or simply hit the “thumbs up” button to show my approval.
After catching up on everyone else’s lives, I would then eagerly upload my own incredible images of the week (carefully edited to show only my best side, of course). The picture of my homemade parashah cupcakes painstakingly decorated with emblems of the 12 Shevatim. A Purim photo of the entire family dressed in coordinating costumes, along with our intricately planned mishloach manos theme. After uploading the pictures, I would sit back and watch as the compliments came pouring in. “Yumm! Orli, those cupcakes look DIVINE! How did you make them?!?” “You look AMAZING!” “Wow! You haven’t changed a bit since high school!!!” “Your kids are so cute, kna”h!”
I would count the “Likes” that rolled in — the tiny thumbs-up symbol that signaled people’s approval of my posts — collecting them like digital flowers in a self-centered little bouquet of compliments, and smile as I read through each of the accolades, soaking up the adoration and praise. I was talented, witty, and creative. People liked me. People noticed me. I was loved.
As time went on, I found myself spending increasingly more time on Facebook. What is it about human beings that makes us so intensely curious about other people’s lives? Each day I was on the lookout for opportunities to post fascinating things on my home page. I saw a funny road sign that said “I used to be addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around.” SNAP! My cell phone captured the image and instantly uploaded it to FB. Yay! Tons of Likes. I posted a sentimental picture of my high school classmates in the fro-yo store, in honor of Throwback Thursday. Instant success.
I was popular. I was loved. Life was good.
That was the fun side of Facebook.
But Facebook has a dark side as well. There were times that I enthusiastically posted things, only to be disappointed by people’s apathetic responses. It stung to be ignored. There were times I watched as digital fights broke out and machlokes tore apart real friendships. Lashon hara often reared its vicious head and jealousy fueled rumors ran rampant.
I sighed as I watched the popular girls from my childhood continue to garner adoration for every little sneeze they posted, while the hangers-on tried desperately to keep up. Would we never move beyond the vagaries of high school popularity contests? It seemed not.
The falseness of Facebook troubled me too. The glaring incongruity between the smiling, posted faces of children whose parents I knew were often neglectful disturbed me. They looked like the perfect family from the outside (#SUNDAYFUNDAY! #BestKidsEvr) but inside, those children were weeping. I also watched sadly as people were mercilessly cyber bullied. Time and time again, others pointedly ignored or ridiculed their posts. Despite feeling terrible for these victims, I’m ashamed to admit that I sometimes remained silent in the face of their abuse, only bolstering their failing egos occasionally with a few kind words.
And privacy — where was privacy these days? It seemed that no relationship was sacred from others’ prying eyes… I watched, wide-eyed, as wives posted snarky comments about their own husbands, airing their dirty laundry for all to see. “My husband should know better than to leave me with a credit card and computer when I’m angry,” one woman posted triumphantly. Yikes. I’d heard about a chassan who had broken up with his kallah because he was fed up with her constant need to broadcast every aspect of their relationship, on Facebook, Hashem yeracheim.
One day I even found an inappropriate picture of a friend. Apparently, her toddler had taken the picture and then accidentally uploaded it to Facebook. The poor woman was absolutely mortified!
There was also a latent undercurrent of pritzus on Facebook. Some of my “friends,” who were not yet frum, liked to post disturbing images in the name of “art.” Unfortunately, the only way for me to avoid these pictures would have been to “unfriend” these women and I was loathe to offend or alienate them further from Yiddishkeit by doing so.
In addition to this, despite the fact that I had a staunch rule of maintaining only female “friends” and male relatives on my news feed, every month, a handful of random men would send me friend requests. Although I politely turned them all down, it made me squirm. I wouldn’t dream of conversing with someone else’s spouse in public, so how could it possibly be mutar to “chat” with them via Facebook? It felt wrong and indecent.
There were also times when I found myself trying, in vain, to dampenwaves of jealousy that rolled over me as I scrolled through pictures of exotic vacations that my “friends” were taking (#ParadiseLiving, YOLO!), while I was stuck shoveling yet another foot of snow off of our front walk ( #H8NWNTR, #Brrr). I wanted desperately to feel happy for my “friends” as they proudly displayed their new diplomas, matriculating from this or that school or publishing yet another book. Instead, I found myself biting my lip in self-doubt. Perhaps I should earn another degree as well, or maybe write my first novel. It must feel good to be so accomplished…
Lest you think that these jealous musings were unusual, a number of studies, including one by Chou and Edge (2012), showing that chronic Facebook users tend to think that others have happier lives than their own, have pointed out that this “down” feeling following social media interaction is actually quite common. Humans are driven to gauge their lives through comparison and when comparison becomes so easy, “compare” can often lead to “despair.” Another study by Buxnann and Krasnova (2013) shows that passively tracking other’s news feeds on social media websites can lead to increased jealousy of other’s accomplishments, possessions, and relationships. In fact, a friend who was experiencing infertility, once confessed to me that she found it extremely painful to view all of the adorable baby pictures that her friends were constantly posting. They only made her own agonizing predicament more unbearable.
I was in a quandary — the more engaging my posts were, the more Likes I garnered. But I wondered… was it fair, or even right of me, to knowingly stir up jealous sentiments in others?
Social media, it seems, is anything but social. Driven by ga’avah and the desperate need to feel accepted, it allows its users to actually disengage emotionally from their surroundings and create an alternate, and often false, universe of flattery and deceit. Perhaps they should rename these social media sites Farcebook and Yentagram.
I worried about the future ramifications of posting things publicly, as well. Although supposedly only my “friends” could view them, who knew if somewhere down the line, an old photograph or hastily written post might come back to haunt me?
I was also acutely aware of the fact that Facebook was being used by Islamic radicals throughout the world to foment hatred and encourage terrorism against Klal Yisrael, Hashem yeracheim. There were pages set up to encourage murder and jihad, with video posts demonstrating explicit instructions on how to inflict maximum damage. Like the Tower of Bavel, it seems that easy connectivity amongst mankind is not always a positive thing…
In addition to this, I knew that the Rabbanim were vocally trying to dissuade people, especially teenagers, from using social media sites. I knew that frightening kidnappings had occurred, with Facebook as the catalyst. The horrors that these innocent victims had been subjected to is to too awful to even discuss..
All of the above information troubled me, of course — but not enough to make me stop using Facebook. My usage was mild and innocent compared to the dangerous stuff, I rationalized. I was in no immediate danger. Although I sometimes deactivated my account temporarily, usually during the month of Elul, I guiltily found myself coming back to it time and time again. Like an irksome habit that I just couldn’t seem to break, Facebook was there to stay.
And then I read the following frightening study, which instantly and completely changed my mind.
Cornell University set out to examine “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks.” They wanted to study people’s emotional responses following Facebook usage. Would seeing only positive posts make people feel happier and, conversely, would seeing only negative posts make them more sad? To conduct the study, Cornell selected 689,003 unsuspecting users and then changed all of their personal newsfeeds, in order to gather this information. Half of the subjects were fed only negative news and half were fed only positive news. Imagine someone rifling through your personal mailbox at home, removing all of your wedding invitations and leaving behind only death announcements. That’s essentially what the Cornell scientists and Facebook researchers did, without even letting people know that they were part of a study! For over a week, scientists used people as human guinea pigs, without their consent, and fed them either only positive or negative news. Talk about mass manipulation!
The whole thing felt so Orwellian and creepy to me. If a group of curious scientists could do this, what was to stop Big Brother from manipulating us in other insidious ways as well? For instance, if Facebook was willing to award free access to the highest bidder, what would stop the government, or private companies, from buying them out and then swaying public opinion on just about anything? With this power they could buy votes (all of my friends appear to be voting for candidate X, so I guess I will too). They could spy on people (there is evidence that this is already being done). They could sway national opinions on foreign policy to enable legislators to more easily pass harmful laws. They could persuade people to buy only certain products. In fact, I had already noticed that when I mentioned a particular brand name in my chats, push notifications and advertisements containing the same brand name showed up in my news feed. Coincidence? I don’t think so. People often behave like mindless sheep and can, unfortunately, just as easily be led astray.
After reading about the nefarious study that Cornell and Facebook had conducted, I decided then and there to permanently delete my account.
I sent a letter to Facebook’s headquarters and asked them to destroy every post, comment, and picture I had ever uploaded over the past six years. They demurred, urging me to simply deactivate my account instead. I knew, though, that if my account was only deactivated, hackers and Facebook personnel could still access my old posts. So I insisted that they delete them forever. Finally, after a month of back-and-forth negotiation, they sent me the letter I had been waiting for. My account was gone. Every opinion, picture, and post was now digitally wiped from cyberspace. Whew! I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Admittedly, the first few days following my account deletion were difficult. I’d suddenly feel the urge to check in on community affairs, upload a witty comment I’d seen, or share a picture of my kids — but I couldn’t. It was like having a vague itch that I knew I would never again be able to scratch. But instead of letting it bother me, I mentally congratulated myself on having the strength of character to stand up for my convictions. When I felt a strong urge to share my family’s cuteness, I simply sent pictures to my mother or a few (real) friends, instead. Sharing feels so much better than bragging.
During those first Facebook-free days, I wondered if any of the hundreds of close “friends” I’d had even noticed my absence.
Two weeks after deleting my account, I got my answer , when one (ONE!) solitary person texted me a frantic “Hello? Are you still alive?!! I haven’t seen you post anything in forever!” The vast majority of my “friends” in cyberspace, it seemed, neither missed nor particularly needed me.
As those first days slowly rolled into weeks, I began to miss Facebook less and less. In the interim, I also discovered something extraordinary. I suddenly had more time for truly meaningful things. I was able to say my daily Tehillim once again. Without other people’s status updates constantly cluttering my brain, I also had more time to think for myself, as well as to write. I picked up sefarim that had lain dusty and untouched for years. I found myself spending quality time with my children, without obsessing over camera angles. It felt amazing to take a stroll through the park without turning into my own personal paparazzi. I no longer needed people to Like my pictures in order to realize that I was a great mother. I knew who I was, and I was good enough. Suddenly, I realized, I had broken out of the digital matrix and was truly living life to its fullest. Baruch Hashem, I was finally FREE!

*Sources: Psychology Today,
TheAtlantic- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Orli Katz, CH, is a freelance writer, lecturer and hypnotist with a private practice located in Waterbury, Connecticut. She welcomes readers’ comments and may be contacted through Binah.