The New York Times When Facebook and its family of apps experienced a daylong malfunction last week, millions of people got a taste of what life would be like if the social network were out of their lives for good. I can tell you more about that: I permanently deleted my Facebook account five months ago. So what has happened in the aftermath? The social network’s long-stated mission has been to connect people so that we can live in a more open world. But after being off Facebook since October, I found that I did not feel less connected and that my social life didn’t suffer, even though I was no longer seeing status updates and pictures on my News Feed. My friends and I continued making plans over email and messaging apps. So did my family. Same old, same old. There were some differences, though — including some strange experiences with online ads. Facebook has long used information that it collects on its users to target people with the most relevant ads. So after a few months of deleting the social network, I began seeing random ads pop up on sites like Instagram (which Facebook owns). Among them: promotions for women’s shaving products, purses and bathing suits. Instagram might have started thinking I was female, but my wallet thanked me. I realized I was spending considerably less money on my usual guilty pleasure of buying clothing and cooking gadgets online because I was no longer seeing the relevant Facebook ads that egged me on to splurge. Over the past five months, my online shopping purchases dropped about 43 percent. So what about FOMO, otherwise known as a fear of missing out, typically induced by social media? That is often one of the biggest reasons people are afraid to quit Facebook. What if they didn’t see that post about an outing with a distant friend? Or a party invitation shared on the social network? For me, it turned out that without Facebook, there wasn’t much I really missed out on — except targeted ads. Here’s more of what I learned. I don’t miss my ‘friends’ Over the 14 years that I used Facebook, I accrued about 500 friends. Most were former classmates whom I had lost touch with. In my real life, I have about 20 friends I talk to on a regular basis. So when I finally deleted Facebook, the fallout was underwhelming. Those same friends kept in touch over iMessage, Signal or email. We still get dinner or go to the movies together. I can think of one friend who exclusively used Facebook Messenger to communicate — we email now and talk less than we used to, but when we meet in person we are as close as we always were. And I can’t remember the last time I attended an event that I was invited to via Facebook, so I never had a case of FOMO. I can also tell you what I absolutely don’t miss about Facebook: the people who frequently posted online quizzes, political news stories or their thoughts about current events on the site. Occasionally, there were funny or interesting posts, but ultimately most were time wasters. Recently, I also started reading more books. Could it be because I’m no longer expending my energy reading Facebook? Brands have long been able to target us with ads through Facebook’s tools. You might see an ad on Facebook for a watch, for instance, because a watch company used the tools to upload your email address and leverage other data that the social network has on you — like your age or the fact that you follow Timex’s Facebook page. When you browse sites outside Facebook, the company can still track your browsing activity to help brands serve you targeted ads. After visiting a website for a pair of shoes, for example, you might see an ad for those shoes — or similar ones — when you go to another site. The social network uses a variety of approaches to collect information about web users. One involves Facebook pixel, an invisible tracker that brands