Since Snapchat became available in Denmark, I think it was late 2011 maybe early 2012, I have been a user and since 2005 I have had a facebook account. I have actually had two, the first was deleted for some reason, so my current one is from 2008 and I have been using it almost religiously ever since then, both on my computers and mobile devices.

One of the things that comes with social-networks in general is notifications and the expectations from your affiliations. That is one of the few things I have detested from the beginning. I started disabling notifications in all social network applications I used such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. The only communication tools I have were I still had notifications enabled is Facebook Messenger and SMS. However, that did not remove the always available expectation from my affiliations. The app that surprised me the most was Snapchat, everyone expected me to answer with in a few minutes, even during my school/work days, and certain persons continuously got angry with me for not responding.

Then, last summer I got a new phone and I decided to not install Snapchat, delete my account, and not tell anyone, after a week one of my friends sought me out and actually started yelling at me for not responding to her snaps. I told her I had uninstalled the App and deleted my account because she and others expected my constant availability. She got even more angry with me and didn’t speak to me for months. This kind of behaviour was a result of how integrated instant communication have become in our daily life. So I have decide to completely stop using Snapchat, I have added a public statement on my facebook profile for all my friends to read that I am no longer using Snapchat.

Now the Facebook App, I am a member of several groups on facebook where Magic the gathering, Linux, and BSD is discussed. The tone in these groups the tone got extremely rough and often the discussion turned into personal attacks instead of a discussion of the actual topic. This annoyed me so much, but due to the facebook mobile app I had constant access to this flow of negativity and often it actually put more stress on me than I thought. I discovered this because I accidentally deleted the facebook app and forgot to reinstall it, and I slowly became more relaxed and a positive. So for this reason I have decide to keep that App uninstalled as well.

-Lars Nielsen