"You need to get off Facebook"

YouTube video encourages people to get off Facebook | News.com.au

Are you thinking of closing your Facebook account?

A YouTube video titled "You need to get off Facebook" will have you convinced it's time to sign off for good.

Written by Ross Gardiner and produced by Sonny Side Films in the US, the six-minute clip looks destined to become a YouTube sensation.

Watch it below

The video shows a young man standing in the middle of a busy street at night.

A constant flow of people walk past as he holds large handwritten cards up to the camera about the downside of Facebook.

One sequence reads:

"You don't have 852 friends, you have about 4, and that's good :). 4 friends that you talk to is better than 848 friends that you don't want to see, but are happy to look at."


Other cards read: "I don't have an account. I've been clean for 5 months and 17 days," and "9 friend requests from people you hated at school, accept them anyway," referring to the absurdities of the social networking phenomenon.

The video, set to the song Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun) by Thievery Corporation, has a lot of people to convince, with Facebook boasting 500 million active users.

The website has been criticised on a range of issues over the years including online privacy, child safety, and the inability to terminate accounts without first manually deleting the content.

Facebook was founded in the US by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 with his Harvard university roommates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

A feature film about Zuckerberg and the rise of Facebook, The Social Network, was released this year and has been nominated for six Golden Globes including best motion picture.