It's interesting that you've done the calculus on these same issues, and come up with a completely different answer than me. I weighed free email etc. against giving up personal data etc. and I came down decidedly on the side that it's not worth it. And because there aren't alternatives, I just don't don't do some things anymore, wherever I can. That means no facebook. No smartphone. No twitter. Not IG. No googling as much as I can. Sometimes I just have to be fine with not knowing things that I could easily look up.

Maybe it's age? How old are you? Not to be that old guy (I'm not even old) but I'm old enough to remember a time when I didn't have the internet, and I didn't have a smart phone, and I didn't even have a computer. And life was... well actually okay. It was fine. I got by day to day and I lived. Today, anyone under 25, all they know is life with the Internet and smartphones. I can't even begin to comprehend that worldview.