You can probably guess the reasons. It was not a productive use of my time, yet seemed to take up a lot of it. I was also having to hide a lot of inappropriate posts. Social networking is often at odds with frum sensibilities. Plus, I felt like I was seeing less and less by way of nice stuff from friends with whom I want to stay in touch, and more and more of people’s political/social turf wars, including my own. As tends to be the case on the internet, the “discourse” is little more than snapping talking points at each other and, for my own mental health, I really just need less of that in my life. There’s plenty of unavoidable machlokes (especially for a lawyer) without adding it as a recreational sport.

I’m going to miss many of the updates from friends, especially old friends who live far away, but I hope this forum and email can take up some of the slack. In the end, for me, the downside of Facebook came to predominate.