Think you’re giving up social media? Think again.

Nicki Minaj did it once. Alec Baldwin does it often and poorly. And chances are, after heavy days of sonogram photos and rhubarb pies cast in “lo-fi” light, you’ve considered ending it all, too. Deleting yourself — or what the most morbid among us call “digital suicide” — is the attempt to go off the grid, to grab control of your persona, time or sanity. The departure is often announced with confident, dramatic flourish. But experts say that more ofte...