Important

Social Media & Your Privacy

These platforms are designed to keep you scrolling and harvest your data. You don’t have to quit everything — but you can downsize.

My recommendation

Take Back Control

You don't have to delete everything at once. Start by locking down your settings, then decide what you actually want to keep.

Review Your Privacy Settings

The honest truth about social media

I’m not going to tell you to delete everything. Your friends and family are on these platforms, and that matters. But every platform you step back from — or lock down — is a genuine win for your privacy. Start with the worst offenders.

Facebook — Leave if you can

Facebook is the most aggressive data harvester of any major consumer platform. It tracks you across the web even when you’re not on Facebook, builds shadow profiles on people who have never signed up, and has been involved in more privacy scandals than any other tech company (Cambridge Analytica, the 2021 data breach exposing 533 million users, and many more).

My recommendation: Delete your account if you can. If you can’t, take these steps:

  1. 1

    Lock down your privacy settings

    Go to Settings → Privacy. Set "Who can see your future posts?" to Friends. Set "Who can look you up using your email/phone?" to Friends.

  2. 2

    Turn off Off-Facebook Activity tracking

    Go to Settings → Your Facebook Information → Off-Facebook Activity. Click "Disconnect Future Activity." This stops Facebook from tracking you on other websites.

  3. 3

    Remove your phone number

    Go to Settings → Personal Information. Remove your phone number if it’s listed — it’s used for ad targeting, not just account recovery.

Instagram — The better Meta option

Instagram is owned by Meta (the same company as Facebook), so it’s not private. But it’s more visual and less algorithmically toxic than Facebook. If you’re going to keep one Meta platform, Instagram is the better choice. Tighten your settings and be mindful of what you share.

  1. 1

    Set your account to Private

    Go to your profile → Settings → Account Privacy and toggle on Private Account. Only people you approve can see your posts.

  2. 2

    Limit ad data usage

    Go to Settings → Ads → Ad Preferences → Ad Settings. Turn off "Data from partners" and "Activity-based ads."

X (formerly Twitter) — Time to go

X has become an increasingly hostile environment since its acquisition in 2022. Beyond the content quality issues, X collects extensive data about you and has loosened its data-sharing policies. There’s no good privacy reason to stay. You don’t need to replace it with anything — simply leaving is fine.

To delete your account: Settings → Your Account → Deactivate your account. Accounts are deactivated for 30 days before permanent deletion.

TikTok — Easy to leave

TikTok recently completed a deal to create a US-based entity, but privacy concerns remain. More practically: everything you love about TikTok is already on Instagram Reels. The short-video format, the same creators, the same content — it’s all there. Leaving TikTok doesn’t mean giving up short videos; it just means watching them in one less app.

💡
You don't have to do this all at once

Pick one platform to leave or lock down this week. Come back and do another one next month. Small steps add up.

How social media platforms make money from you

Every major social media platform is an advertising business. The product they sell is your attention and your data. They collect everything: what you post, what you like, what you scroll past, how long you pause on a video, your location, your contacts, and your behavior on other websites and apps. This data is used to build detailed advertising profiles and sold to thousands of advertisers.

The business model creates a fundamental conflict of interest: the more time you spend on the platform, the more data they collect and the more ads they can show you. This is why these apps are designed to be as addictive as possible.

The Cambridge Analytica moment

In 2018, it emerged that a political consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent, using it to build psychological profiles for political advertising. Facebook had allowed third-party apps to collect not just the data of users who installed them, but the data of all their friends — without those friends’ knowledge or consent.

This was not an isolated incident. It was a window into how Facebook’s data-sharing model worked at scale. The platform has since tightened some of these policies, but the fundamental architecture — a business built on harvesting and monetizing personal data — has not changed.

The attention economy and your mental health

The privacy costs of social media are inseparable from the mental health costs. These platforms are engineered by teams of behavioral scientists to maximize engagement — which means maximizing the emotional responses (outrage, envy, anxiety) that keep you scrolling. Reducing your use isn’t just good for your privacy; it’s good for your wellbeing.

Further Reading