If it's bothering you this much, maybe it's time to get offline.

mrsconn23

Dear Prudence,

I know this is a petty problem, but one that I’ve been getting more upset about lately than I should be: getting unfriended. I have a Facebook account, and over the years I’ve had quite a few people unfriend me. I know this because occasionally I wonder how someone I went to college/high school with is doing, find their Facebook account, and see that they’ve deleted me. This in itself isn’t a big deal—it stings a bit, of course, but I know some people do purges from time to time, like to keep their social media followers current, etc.

The part about this that bugs me is that I seem to be the only one getting the ax. I went to a small high school, and yesterday I wondered how an old friend from school was doing and saw he’d deleted me. But we still had dozens of mutual contacts, many of which he hadn’t known nearly as well as me! I’ve had this happen over and over again. People will delete me, but leave everyone else they knew from the same context as me.

For my own part, I very rarely update my own FB profile and mostly use it to like other people’s posts and leave an occasional pleasant comment. I never post anything offensive, political, or unkind. I just don’t get it. I’m 30—too old to be upset about being unfriended by friends and acquaintances from years ago, but I am! Any tips on how to cope with this?

— Friendly but Unfriended

banana468

It's FB.  You're going to need to let it go. 

ETA - I see this with people of all ages.  FIL gets on a soapbox of how he can't stand "what social media has become" so he deleted his FB and MIL will lament that people don't tell her what's going on because it's on FB and she refuses to have an account.

If you want to know how people are doing, ask them.  

levioosa

LW, you have too much time on your hands if you’re researching people’s FB this much. 

MyNameIsNot

If they're unfriending you and no one else, it probably means you're either more obnoxious on social media than you think, or you suck IRL. If you don't talk to these people outside of FB, who cares why they unfriend you? They weren't your friends anyway.

But maybe it's just time to quit farmville and MLMs. 

VarunaTT

If you rarely update your FB profile, I unfriend you.  It makes me uncomfortable for people to have such immediate full access to my life, without an equivalent exchange.

If FB (or other social media) is bothering you that much, stop using it.  That might be hard, but there are steps you can take to start minimizing and stopping.

downtondiva

Unless these are people who you were friendly and regularly interacting with on FB and they suddenly dropped you, which doesn't appear to be the case, you really shouldn't let it bother you this much. If your FB use is truly what you say it is, then it might be that some of them unfriended you because they didn't hear much from you or because they were cutting back their friends lists to people they felt closer to. I don't think there's any value to taking this as personally as you are, and it's probably best that you stop spending so much time on FB and find other things to do, online or off.

MissKittyDanger

I remember there was a point when certain people unfriended me but they didn't unfriend M {when arguably, the reason they were mad at me they could have been just as mad at him}
That pissed me off.

Drama drama drama.

End of the day, it's fb. People unfriend people for varying reasons.
If it bugs you that much, you need to walk away from social media for a bit.