I can imagine less effective scenarios. 1) Not changing your life at all. 2) Not touching your Facebook page again. 3) Dressing up in a chicken suit and dancing around a major intersection. etc.
If you delete your Facebook page, it's one less user that Facebook can claim to have; if enough people do it, it could put a dent (however minor) in their bottom line.
And you are not a mass, you are one person. And if your friends are anything like mine, you are not going to convince them to leave. Most people are happy to give up a little privacy, for the ease of keeping in touch with their friends that FB offers.
FB has a critical mass, so it is not as easy as suggesting an alternative.
Sure, convincing a group of people to delete their Facebook accounts is better than just deleting your own, but discouraging people en masse from enacting simple changes also discourages emergent behaviours in the crowd before they even start.
Focusing on and performing little actions distracts from doing the the big things that actually make a noticeable difference.
As people (and I) have said over and over, don't put anything on the net that you don't want to be public.
Well, I haven't put my mother's maiden name up. But the more information about me that's up, the more connections are possible, until someone derives my mother's maiden name (or some other security question). Remember, we don't always get to choose a security question, that's relatively new. Banks, credit agencies, phone company, someone has something about you that's derivable.
Like I said, I don't care if FB changes or not, that's not necessary for me to want to leave, or at least diminish my presence.