I am a social media researcher, lecturer, and consultant. Invariably whenever I speak with someone about social media, the conversation turns from the theoretical and abstract (best practices for getting your posts noticed; or the effect of social media on democratic participation in society) to the mundane and personal. When this happens, we usually start talking about what social media accounts we use ourselves, or, innocently enough, someone will ask me to connect with them on their social media accounts – first among them, of course, being the eponymous Facebook. When this conversation occurs, I attempt to casually mention that I no longer have a Facebook account, and it is there that my friends, colleagues, students, peers in the industry look at me as if I have suddenly grown a second head.

“Whaaaaaaat? You’re a social media expert (their words, not mine) and you are not on Facebook?”

or

“How can you not be on Facebook? You STUDY social media”

or sometimes I simply get the blank stare of *this does not compute, please try again*. Sometime after that the conversation usually moves on to other, more interesting topics, but usually not before I explain myself and the reasons why I do not use Facebook and really do not want to go back to using it. Some of these reasons are bigger: political economy and democracy type ideals. Others are smaller, more personal, how I want to focus my time and energy. Admittedly, I sometimes fail at achieving my ideals in the second group, simply because of the abundance of social media distractions out there.

I will detail each of these in subsequent posts, but for now, I want to explain why I think I can be a very good social media researcher and consultant without a Facebook account, as this is a critique I come up against fairly often.

Facebook is not the same as it was even a year ago. The algorithms are always being tweaked to either address a problem (fake news) or make more money for clients (the businesses that advertise on Facebook). However, most of these changes are invisible to the average user. As a consultant and researcher, my job is to know about these changes, to learn of them through professional literature, Facebook’s news and video releases, and where appropriate, the academic and marketing literature. Even if I were a regular user of Facebook, I would not really know about these changes unless I did significant research outside my use of the platform.

It’s my job  to do the research on the platform – I don’t need to use the platform in order to do this. When I find out new information about how to make a post spread or a tweak to Facebook’s algorithm, I work on changing an approach that one of my clients on Facebook has. Again, a personal Facebook account (or lack of one) doesn’t help or hinder me here. I’m more concerned about professional Facebook use anyway. When I work with my clients, giving them new information, and tweaking their strategy, we begin to see together what works and what doesn’t, which really should be individual and personalized anyway, and not dependent on my personal experience of the platform. Finally and most importantly, my lack of personal engagement on Facebook gives me a professional distance that is helpful. I’m not swayed by what I see in my own (filtered) feed. Instead, I can and must base my advice on research into what audiences outside my own limited network are doing and saying online.

I might not argue that being away from Facebook makes me better at giving social media advice, but I can certainly claim that it is not hurting my performance. Over all, I’m using the hours I gain back by NOT being on Facebook to read more about the latest trends impacting social media use on many different platforms, and I think that’s time well spent.