Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she left Facebook because 'social media poses a public health risk to everybody' (FB)
- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used Facebook to campaign for office, and it was a major success.
- But, in a recent interview with Yahoo News' Skullduggery podcast, Ocasio-Cortez said she "gave up" on using Facebook personally.
- Ocasio-Cortez uses other social media still: She has an active Instagram presence, and uses Twitter "on the weekends occasionally."
- Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is done with Facebook.
"I personally gave up Facebook," she said in a recent interview with Yahoo News' Skullduggery podcast.
That's particularly notable because Ocasio-Cortez partially built her successful campaign for the House of Representatives using Facebook.
"I started my campaign on Facebook, and Facebook was my primary digital organizing tool for a very long time," she said.
Her office still operates official pages on Facebook, but the congresswoman says she is personally off of the world's most popular social media platform.
But why?
"I actually think that social media poses a public health risk to everybody," she said. "Increased isolation, depression, anxiety, addiction, escapism — I think that it poses these issues to everyone."
Ocasio-Cortez is still an active Instagram user, and said she limits her Twitter use to weekends. "I've started to impose little rules on myself," she said. "You will see me hop on Twitter on the weekends, but for the most part ... I take the weekends off."
That rule appears to be one she doesn't always stick to — as of this writing she had tweeted seven times on Wednesday.
But as she said during the interview, "It takes a lot to try to unwind those habits."
For more from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, check out the full interview with Yahoo News right here.
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