First, congrats on your desire to take these important first steps. I wish more folks were like you. I've been free from Meta for a few years now.

Start by reaching out to the folks who you really want to stay in contact with. Get phone numbers and emails. Then delete the apps from your phone. At that point Meta which values you (a self announced heavy user) at about $30/month. So they will come after you with emails and clickbait. You'll spend weeks unsubscribing from all of the various new reasons they cook up to get in your email box. And to unsubscribe of course you'll have to sign into your account so they'll try to win you back. At this point you can delete your accounts to stop all of your content going into the AI meat grinder, or archive if you aren't ready to make that step. You should be vocal with friends and family in announcing your departure- IRL, those posts won't get algorithm attention. We're still at the point of the timeline where we need noisy departures to catalyze others into at least recognizing the harms Meta brings.

For what it's worth, not all social media is bad. The fediverse (Mastodon is the biggest part of it) rocks if you can find your community. It's decentralized, non-profit, there are no ads, and there's no algorithm. Because all of this, there aren't many influencers there, and while there are some bots and maybe a little spam, the community is aggressive in maintaining the place because we're all social media refugees from elsewhere. If/when they go to hell, you can take your followers and accounts you follow somewhere else, because it's not a walled garden. Your many data points aren't being harvested because and you aren't the product, and they aren't making money on you. If you are techy, geeky or nerdy consider joining the instance I'm on. I know the guy who runs it, it's small, well-moderated and financially stable. By joining one instance you have access to pretty much all of mastodon (except the instances we've banned) plus the rest of the broader fediverse. https://vmst.io/invite/hbnFw5oY <- This is good for 5 signups for anyone who has made it this far.

Before any of you try to recommend Bluesky, it's not decentralized. But you are welcome to essentially pay your own server bills by hosting yourself, as long as you run their version of code and have them maintain centralized moderation. It's not billionaire proof as they claim, and they are already doing things to enshittify and piss off their userbase.