I didn’t use Facebook or Instagram for a year (and I didn’t self implode)

Jen Tiang
Jen Tiang
Sep 1, 2018 · 5 min read

You’ll probably have gathered by now that I recently lived in China. For just under two years I called Shanghai home and as many know , China runs the show a little differently to the Rest Of The World. One major difference is the countrywide ban on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. (Many foreign news sites are also blocked although from time to time I was able to access the New York Times.) WhatsApp ended up getting blocked around six months ago but messaging worked on and off. (Seems the head honchos at the Cyber Administration of China — the country’s internet regulators/online security guards — like to mix things up a bit).

Before I went over I did get myself a VPN under the guidance of my younger brother (who is also my personal IT consultant. He’s what you’d call your classic “early adopter”. At high school, he was the first one with an iPod. I was embarrassed for him at the time. “Michael, why are you carrying around that weird white calculator looking thing? And why are you wearing white earphones? People are going to laugh at you”. Michael just shrugged his shoulders and continued walking along, jamming to his own personal playlist stored in this iPod contraption.

Remember these?

Fast forward six months and everybody at school was bopping around with white wires dangling from their ears. Well, anyone that could afford it).

So this VPN did allow me access to Face-stagram and other banned websites and apps while I was behind The Great Firewall of China. The thing is, it took ages for anything to load and my VPN connection was quite temperamental. After a short while I kind of gave up altogether. I also thought I might as well “go native” while I was in China, and that included doing so in cyberspace.

So for communication I relied mainly on Wechat, China’s “app for everything” (you can buy movie tickets and pay your electricity bills using this app, no kidding) and used Baidu, which is China’s equivalent of Google.

There were times where I found my signal was good and, like an addict, I had a quick Facebook binge. Scrolling and scrolling and liking and liking. Throwing out random “thumbs ups” or a “ha ha”. When my signal was good, I knew I had to make the most of it. Often I’d use these times to upload a blog post on here (photos in particular took a long time), since Medium is also sadly blocked in China. Or I would catch up on WhatsApp group activity.

Sometimes the group chat backlog was 70 or 80 messages I had missed. I’d panic thinking I’d miss a wedding or pregnancy or birth announcement (often I had) and I would quickly try to make amends so as not to be That Person that didn’t acknowledge (it can be quite stressful right? These are stresses that never existed 10 years ago!).

All that aside, I think my year spent off Facebook and other social media made me more calm, centered, present and a bit more of a thinker. (Which could be good or bad; still deciding that). It helped me be in dialogue with myself a lot more.

I guess we only have a certain amount of mental bandwidth in our day, so since I was (arguably quite selfishly) not in online dialogue with heaps of other people I had a lot more time to just hang out and ponder stuff. It made me seek out hang-time with others in real life as well. If I was bored I would go and hang at Carole/Karen’s next door or go down to the fruit store downstairs and play with their kittens. Or just walk around parks people watching. I think not having the option of online scrolling freed up a lot of time. (Or possibly just made me a bit lurky).

I’ve now moved to Singapore — back in the land of Facebook and WhatsApp, where places actually advertise themselves as “Most Instagrammable Café”! — and it’s been an adjustment and a bit of a shock that I didn’t foresee happening. Almost like re-entry trauma. You know how astronauts need that decompression time after they’ve been in space for ages? I kind of feel like that. Facebook and Instagram starts up at the click of a button. And it loads so fast! No signal drops! No VPN needed!

I am feeling low level anxiety with all the news and photos and updates. Some days I am opening and scrolling through both apps the moment my eyes open in the morning. Before, I would have such a gentle start to my day and got into a habit of not picking up my phone until I’d been up a good hour. My “waking up” brain was on a gentle slow boil. I think I liked that better.

I have adult-onset-online-shyness too now. (Is this a thing? Or just me?) I don’t really know how or what to hashtag if I post an Instagram photo. What’s the purpose of the hashtag again? Is it to be funny? I’m not building my “brand” so I don’t need to hashtag to gain followers right? I don’t really know what photos to share too. Why am I sharing them? Do people want to see my lunch? Is it being tactless to people who can’t afford this nice food? But then maybe they’re not on Instagram. I think my time off “socials” made me think too much…!

My brother mocked me last week about my social media game, and how the only comment to a video I posted on Facebook was from our Aunty in England. Hah! You may laugh little brother. But little did you know that she was my target audience. So my post was successful. My “socials” are on target. ✌️

Jen Tiang

Jen Tiang

Follow my debacles, challenges and adventures in Asia.

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