Even if you’ve got multiple ways to communicate and participate in society online, there is not really a good replacement for Facebook. There’s no one portal that reminds you of your friends’ birthdays, connects you to relatives across the world and stores photos from 10 years ago. Deleting Facebook inevitably means missing out on certain things and having to make more of an effort to connect with people in other ways.
What’s more, unless you delete Facebook’s entire ecosystem of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, you aren’t safeguarding yourself from the company’s data-collection practices. I haven’t brought myself to delete WhatsApp, for example, because I still think that the benefits of using that outweigh the privacy tradeoffs. Nor have I fully deleted Instagram, which is just as nefarious as Facebook. Deleting my Facebook account may have some way to protecting my sanity, but it has done little to minimise my digital footprint.
Source: Facebook: is it time we all deleted our accounts? | The Guardian