Leaving Social Media
Should I keep my accounts?
You leave the house. Keys, wallet, and phone. After making sure you have the vitals to get by, why is the third most important thing your smartphone? We never used to take our entire phone book and stack of maps out for a day trip, so there has to be something unique about our devices that isn’t just directions and contacts. Perhaps this difference is social media.
A mobile now contains so much of our life, from access to the internet to endless online connections. With Kylie Jenner having 276 million followers on Instagram at the time of writing, it’s clear we are making use of this.
We feel safer, better prepared and at ease with our phone, and so many of us know the sheer horror of thinking you’ve lost it. But not all of us use our devices in the same way. You can have many of the benefits of a phone without social media, so is this what needs to be deleted from our screens to break free from our online obsession?
The Issues to Address
If you grow up in a world where people prove themselves with posts, it’s hard for you to step outside this cycle and find your own self-worth, and then there’s those who’ve grown up in a pandemic where the online world has been their perception of the outside reality for a significant amount of time now.
Facebook has taken the world by storm, and although “the service was initially only available to Harvard students” (Statista), it has quickly become something we all have to learn to enjoy living with.
It takes a strong individual to do anything outside the norm, and with Facebook having “roughly 2.89 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2021” (Statista) it can make you stand out if you don’t make an account. And why wouldn’t you? It only takes five minutes.
There is a bigger debate here, however, and despite the ease, many don’t initially realise what having an account means. It can place you in a wide social network of connection and comparison you didn’t anticipate and stepping out of this requires skill and bravery.
Living in Harmony
When using the word ‘quitting’ this doesn’t mean deleting all your accounts tonight. There are ways to incorporate boundaries that help you enjoy the positives of online.
Here’s a few ways to do this:
- Use time limits on apps
- Turn off likes on Instagram
- Don’t feel the pressure to post. Do it when you genuinely feel excited to share a moment with the people you know
- Follow accounts that make you happy (e.g. hobbies, dogs etc)
- Spend more free time getting outdoors
- Learn to love your own company with new hobbies not associated with screens (e.g. yoga, painting, house plant care)
You Don’t Need to Leave Social Media
Leaving social media likely won’t transform your life alone without additional steps.
The trick is to implement new hobbies and habits that become so engrained and enjoyable that you forget to check the apps. By going cold turkey, you open yourself up to a struggle to find something to replace that time with, and this can be more challenging than it needs to be.
The best thing about finding hobbies that keep you busy is eventually you get to a point where you form a healthier relationship with the online world, only checking it for messages and having less time to deliberate over a post.
So, do you quit social media? Why not try it and see, but the sweet spot seems to be living with it in a healthier way rather than cutting it out of our lives entirely.
Works Cited:
Statista Research Department. “Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 2nd quarter 2021.” Statista. Sep 10th 2021 https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ Accessed 18/10/2021
Youn, Soo. “’I get better sleep’: the people who quit social media” The Guardian. 10th February 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/feb/10/people-who-quit-social-media Accessed 18/10/2021
Images:
1- Image by Buffik from Pixabay
2- Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay
3- Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
