RIP digital me: Saying good-bye to Facebook

Dylani Shea ended her virtual life after coming home late one night from a part-time bartending job to find a customer had tracked her down on Facebook.

“Customers looking me up on Facebook and sending me messages is totally weird,” said the second-year York University student. “I decided I didn’t really want myself out there for just anyone to be able to contact me. I didn’t want to be part of it any more.”

Ms. Shea ended a five-year infatuation with social networking in January by deactivating a Facebook account that linked her to nearly 1,000 friends. She is one of the latest recruits to a small but determined movement of once-committed Internet gadflies who are redefining their relationship with social media to protect their privacy. Some are pulling out completely – sometimes with the help of social media “suicide” programs – while others are simply creating new accounts under pseudonyms with smaller networks of close friends.