I Left Social Media.

I left the one thing I feared I could never live without, and here's why.

Let's backtrack. It’s a random Tuesday in December of 2021 and I sorta feel like the world is ending. Not in the, “GOOD LORD that's an asteroid headed straight for us!” but in the, “I have seen so many people on the internet tell me the world is ending,” way. 

I felt doomed. My life was over. End of story. Until I closed off Tiktok.

The moment I did the voices shut up and my head cleared. I was functioning as a human being without everyone else's ideas, opinions, problems, ringing like alarms in my head. 

My world felt like it was ending a second time that day when I realized I had to delete social media. 

I didn’t actually delete it. I made one of those phony half-done goals that I would stay off social media. I wouldn’t scroll. I’d pick up that book I was putting off. Or write the article I was procrastinating. But I did not do that, my brain needed the endless lull of people's “perfect lives” on Instagram and Tiktok’s mind-numbing videos. This was the life I had accepted…time to just roll over and die rather than give up the one thing that brought me joy in my life. 

Then I listened to an Emma Chamberlain podcast episode (highly recommended) about how she deleted Tiktok for two weeks. Everything she said was true and right and so obnoxious that I almost shut off the podcast because I did not want to listen to what I needed to hear. I felt like a child cupping their hands over their ears and screaming to drown out their parents telling them it’s bedtime. 

You see, I had a decent following…I had people who “looked up to me” that “needed me.” I was a beacon of hope in this dark world and if I left what would everyone do! (so not true.)

I made SO MANY excuses for why I could not delete social media. “But I have…” Yes, we know about your 65k followers, but who EVEN CARES?

I wasn’t making money. I was stressed. I hated myself just a bit. My creative juice was drained and all I had left were the dregs of my damaged social life.

Even after this contemplation, I was still at a crossroads. My ENTIRE identity had become so connected to these platforms. I was genuinely attached to who I was on social media because on there It was all bright lights and a bubbly personality. I almost liked her, the person I was online, better than I actually liked myself. Because the person I was on social media always knew the right thing to say, always had the best advice, always put others first, always did the right thing to do. She seemed to be a better version of me, someone who was composed, witty, and smart.

I had fallen in love with a make-believe part of my identity. I am not saying those parts don’t exist, I would like to think of myself as the things listed above, but with her, they were magnified, contagious.

It was my mom who practically coerced me into watching The Social Dilemma with her. I was VERY against it and put her off for two weeks before she caught up to me and sat me down in front of the TV.

That documentary changed how I saw social media entirely.

It was no longer a matter of how I felt but what it was making me feel, and how it was making me feel that way. Two of my favorite quotes from the movie go like this;

“We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short term signals: hearts, likes, thumbs up and we conflate that with value and we conflate it with truth. And instead, what it is is fake brittle popularity that’s short term and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Because that enforces you into a vicious cycle where you’re like what’s the next thing that I need to do now, because I need it back.” — Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital

“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product” — Daniel Hövermann

The first quote highlights what I was just saying. We shape our identities in false popularity. But that second one was something I did not want to process…mostly because of how much truth it held. We are the products.

They are selling us in a sense, and if you watch the movie (which you totally should) you will understand not only the truth behind it all but the impact of it.

And that impact was what drove me to delete everything the same day…well and my mother’s bribery because she had been wanting me to delete it for months. (Fun fact: I now have a film camera.) Anyways, I told myself it was going to be a two-week experiment, not forever, just gonna dip my toes in the water of no social media.

I’m gonna be brutally honest…it wasn’t that bad at first. 

Keywords: “at first”.

Then I saw the full force of my addiction. It began with my FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and ended in barely holding onto my sanity.

Let me explain.

I am a VERY social person and once I deleted everything I suddenly felt disconnected and utterly disoriented. The entirety of my “friendships” were on social media and I had not realized it until I had basically no one to interact with. No posts to like or stories to comment on. It was then that I discovered how shallow my relationships were. That I did not have friends on social media but the appearance of friendship. Each like and comment made me feel loved and appreciated, but in the end it was just feeding into this false idea I had about the people in my “life.”

The lack of socialization led me to recede into myself. I did a lot of reflection in those two weeks, read quite a few books, and even found myself digging deeper into my faith. I still had contradicting emotions about all of it, but did not find myself hating it.

Then the two weeks were up and I didn’t really want it back…

My sleep schedule improved and so did my creative capability (shocking). My life had become normal without social media and so I left it that way.

Do not get me wrong…I have my days. The ones where I kind of want to cry because I miss what I had, what I felt like I needed. But with each day I am appreciating life just a bit more and can see myself being shaped into someone that has a greater understanding of the world and who they want to be.

My challenge for you is at some point this year to delete social media for two weeks. Cold Turkey. And see how you feel. 

If you do, I want to hear about your experience. Email me at thelonesolblog@gmail.com