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Do you have what it takes to quit Facebook?

Thomas Reyes, president of GreyStone Property Development, was one of the brave users who said enough is enough.Kayana Szymczak for The Boston Globe

Turns out mothers are not the only ones inclined to use the good old-fashioned guilt trip. Facebook does it, too.

That’s what Pat Jenakanandhini of Westford learned on Wednesday, when he went to delete his account in the wake of the data-breach scandal, disgusted that the social media site has become a “surveillance tool.”

“It showed me all these pictures [of Facebook friends] and said, ‘This person is going to miss you, and this person is going to miss you, and this person is going to miss you,’ ” he said.

One photo was of his own wife. “Come on — she lives with me!” said Jenakanandhini, a senior vice president at a software firm.

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He got out anyway, a move that separates him from the digital shrug that greeted the recent news that the data-mining company Cambridge Analytica collected private information from more than 50 million Facebook users.

In an age when reports of data breaches arrive with the regularity of Trump scandals, most of Facebook’s 2.2 billion active users/hostages reacted predictably:

They vented via hashtag: #DeleteFacebook appeared tens of thousands of times on Twitter.

They threatened to quit, like an exasperated dad with a car full of rambunctious kids: “Don’t make me pull this car over to the side of the road!”

They vowed to pull back, if just a bit, from the social media site, by posting fewer updates.

And then, for the most part, they got back to the business of “liking.”

Despite studies showing that spending time on Facebook can lead to a decline in mental health, only a small percentage have the strength to cut themselves off from news of high school classmates’ breakfast choices, quizzes to learn which Disney princes they’d be, and in-your-face vacation photos of frenemies.

Yes, we waste a lot of time on Facebook. But imagine the time drain if you weren’t on the site — writing individually to friends, family, and the friends of friends of friends of friends (who are somehow in your feed) to update them on life’s minutia.

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“Hi! I wanted to let you know that I was doing Whole30, but when my flight to Florida got delayed and the kids went crazy I stress-ate an Auntie Anne’s pepperoni pretzel at Logan. LOL.”

Leah Klein, a Cambridge blogger, has grown so dependant on Facebook that despite concerns about digital privacy, she’s not trying to get out.

“Facebook lets you give the illusion of caring [about staying in touch] even when you don’t,” she said.

Some Facebook users feel so guilty about staying they’re vowing to leave — tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that.

“I want to see what action [Facebook] takes in the very near term [to rectify things],” said Peter Gori, a commercial real estate broker in Jamaica Plain.

“I’m seriously considering quitting for a 30-day trial run,” said Sharyn Fireman, a consultant from Braintree.

Then she started to think about the logistics of getting post-Facebook contact information to her 900 FB friends and began to sound nervous. “It’s a very tough decision,” she said.

Is it even worth pointing out that most calls for anti-Facebook action are happening on Facebook itself?

“The data breach was the result of developers taking advantage of people who answered quizzes, contests, game invitations, etc.,” Dorchester photographer Ken Rivard wrote in a Thursday post. “The developers were able to scoop up the info not just of the people who just participated in the What-Superhero-Are-You? questionnaires, but all of their friends as well.

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“What this means is that going forward, if you want to know which cast member of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ you closely resemble . . . I WILL UNFRIEND YOU,” he wrote.

What does this all mean for Facebook? Even before the data breach, the social media site wasn’t quite what it used to be.

In 2018, the portion of Americans reporting they “currently ever use Facebook” declined, according to Edison Research, the first drop since the firm began tracking use, in 2008.

In 2017, 67 percent of Americans who are 12 or older used the site, compared with 62 percent this year.

Earlier this week, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told The New York Times he does not think the firm has seen a “meaningful number of people” act on the #DeleteFacebook campaign, but a number of high- (and low-) profile people are doing it.

On Friday, Elon Musk — who may have already been unhappy with Zuckerberg over a prior incident, according to Business Insider — deleted the official Facebook pages for his Tesla and SpaceX companies.

Earlier in the week, @Cher alerted Twitter followers she was quitting.

“2day I did something VERY HARD 4 me,” she tweeted. “Facebook has helped me with my Charity, & there are amazing young Ppl there . . . but today I deleted my Facebook account.”

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Closer to home, some regular folks are leaving Facebook’s orbit, too.

On Thursday, in Hyde Park, Thomas Reyes, president of GreyStone Property Development, finally said enough is enough. He was already convinced — predata breach — that Facebook was spying on him, citing as evidence ads that appeared in his feed “coincidentally.”

“One time I texted about probiotics and probiotics showed up in my time line,” he said. “Another time I was talking — talking — on the phone about a pair of sneakers and then those showed up [in an ad].”

He’s worried about missing important news about far-flung family, he said. “But what’s more important? My privacy, or finding out that Jenny is going to work on hump day?”

Meanwhile, in Canton, Lauren Beckham Falcone knows she should flee the social media site, but she also knows she’s not going anywhere.

“Facebook is my ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ ” the WROR on-air personality said, channeling the movie’s famous line. “I wish I knew how to quit you.”


Beth Teitell can be reached at beth.teitell@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @BethTeitell.