In January 2018, I took what I thought was a one month’s retreat from Facebook. I’d been through a lot of changes. My father had died in December 2017 after a difficult year in which I’d spent in total three months in England being with him, flying back and forth from Singapore six times; I’d still been teaching at the National University of Singapore, researching, struggling with my permanent resident status in a manner that had become familiar over the past few years, and finally having my application for Singapore citizenship rejected. And we had also, on January 1^st, finally made a move to Canada, on that now familiar flight from Singapore through Taipei to Vancouver, when you pass through dusk, night, and dawn, and yet arrive only a few hours after you left, but still wrapped up in that cold winter darkness.

The reason I wanted to take time out from Facebook had, initially, little to do with some of the doubts about the political and social role of social media that emerged in 2018, encapsulated by Shoshana Zuboff’s phrase “surveillance capitalism.” It was more a sense of not wanting to be always looking over my shoulder, getting accounts of events that were happening in Singapore that I couldn’t attend or be part of, while there was a new life to be made in Canada. I also found that I, like many social media users, was checking my feed too much, often many times a day. There was a sense of pressure – so many articles forwarded to me that I didn’t have time to read, and also the sensation of being in an echo chamber, with my news curated for me by a group of like-minded people. When Facebook had first become really important me, on an occasion when I’d been away from Singapore on sabbatical, I’d relished this aspect of the medium – almost like getting my own personal news magazine curated by people whose views complemented mine. But now I wanted something broader, and without the rush of having to process things so very quickly. And, being off Facebook, I felt happy that way. One month became two, then three. It’s now been over a year. Most of my notifications are switched off – mysteriously, I still get one or two! I’ve deleted the Facebook App on my phone and my tablet. I still use Facebook Messenger, and I do occasionally review material in one or two of my groups, and follow a tag if an email from Facebook gets through to me, or go to a friend’s page for updates – perhaps once or twice a month. But I don’t read my feed at all, I don’t forward, and I think I’ve posted once in the last year, simply to update contact information and travel plans.

What are the losses? The most important has been keeping up with friends, and especially former students. Remove the cat photos and the humble bragging and there are still important events that are marked on Facebook: births, relationships beginning and ending, new jobs, courses of study, illnesses, deaths. I’ve lost that connection, although I’m reassured by the fact that my account is still there: if I am contacting someone, or meeting them, I can always go in and catch up.

Second, I think there has been a loss in terms of my relationship with Singapore. I do follow news quite closely, via news websites, both mainstream and alternative, and through information friends forward me via WhatsApp. But I don’t feel as present as before. For me, that’s a big change. Part of the psychology of a migrant is that you often try to know as much as you can about the society you migrate to, trying to become more English than the English, more Singaporean than the Singaporeans. For me, precise knowledge of Singapore in a complex way was very important: I still have much of that knowledge in historical terms. But I’m much less up to date on politics, literature, or the cultural scene in general: I can see things in broad brushstrokes, but not the fine detail I once worked in.

And yet for me the benefits have outweighed the losses. The most important change in this year away from Facebook I’d characterize as a regaining of interiority, something that I had been unaware of losing. It’s that ability to think deeply and read, to not always be skimming through posts and articles, and this in turn translates into some deeper form of self-awareness and reflection. I’m still not entirely there yet – I find that I read more shallowly than I did twenty years ago, without so much concentration. But I have more times when I’m not distracted, when I’m not online, where I can be in my body, snowshoeing or hiking, or simply daydreaming without distraction. I’ve been writing a lot in the past year, but again not for an audience –I’ve consciously limited the frequency of these posts to once or so a month. But I have been journaling and meditating, exploring. Being away from Facebook has given me this sense of the depth of self back.

My ongoing dilemma is how to maintain the gains I’ve made. It’s good to step back from the world at times, but it’s also important to re-engage, and to try to work for change. I now, for better or worse, have a different place in the world than I would have had if I’d remained in academia. One temptation as you age as an academic is often to become sage-like, to make huge generalizations about the world that come from acquired wisdom, but not to do cutting-edge research and in many ways become rather complacent. I’ve avoided that fate, which I see some colleagues succumbing to, very readily! And yet there’s also an equal temptation, suggested by the meaning of the word “retirement” – to begin to withdraw from a world that you cannot change. I do want private spaces, but really only so I can renew my engagement. And in this world, in many arenas, social media is an almost inescapable part of engagement with the social.

Will I come back to Facebook? In all probability, yes, or at least to other forms of social media outside of WhatsApp, which I use regularly find does promote one-to-one conversations. If I do begin my Counselling Psychology Program in September, I’ll be part of a new community in which the use of social media will play a part. But I hope to see it more as a tool, rather than something central to my sense of self, and to preserve that sense of quiet that being away from Facebook has given me.