I Have an On-Again, Off-Again Relationship with Social Media
It’s complicated, to say the least.
Social Media gets me down pretty often, that’s why I don’t allow myself to spend too much time scrolling endlessly through the curated highlights of other people’s lives. One time, I even deleted Instagram from my phone for two glorious weeks.
But eventually, I got back to it out of a fear of missing out. Yes, I suffered from Instagram-induced FOMO, not because I feared missing out on my friend’s updates, but because I feared missing out on an opportunity to gain exposure for my work and market myself as a writer.
In fact, I didn’t miss seeing my friends’ updates at all. My closest friends still updated me on their lives via texting and phone calls, so I still felt extremely close to them. I knew everything about the challenges they were facing and the victories they achieved without seeing their posts or daily stories about what they had for breakfast or how they were hitting the gym.
My not-so-close friends and my acquittances, however, I didn’t miss one bit. You see, I don’t wish them ill, but seeing how far they had made in life while I felt like I couldn’t figure out what my next step should be was extremely depressing.
After my divorce, the last thing I wanted to see was pictures of their perfect weddings, or receive almost daily proof of how happy and stable their marriages were.
After I had spent most of my mid to late twenties wanting a baby, I didn’t want to see other girls my age who were pregnant for the second time.
After I decided to radically change careers and essentially start over from scratch, I didn’t want to see anyone humble-bragging about how they worked so hard at their amazing, well-paying jobs.
Sure, I know everyone has their problems, their challenges, and people in general do a great job at hiding all of that on social media. Anyone who had been following my Instagram a month after my divorce would never have guessed the marriage was actually falling apart.
Knowing that, however, doesn’t eliminate the raw instinct we feel when we see an image on the internet. We see the post, and we believe in the narrative behind it. Why wouldn’t we?
And more: we expand on that narrative on our own.
Happy couple picture? They must have the happiest, most fulfilling relationship.
Happy mom with baby? She’s nailing this whole motherhood thing. Look how easy it is for her. 3am feedings must be her absolute favorite thing in the world.
Happy worker at the end of a professional conference? Look how well he’s doing. His career is definitely taking off. I bet he loves his 9-to-5 more than he loves vacations, and he never, ever, feels like he wants to murder his boss.
These pictures and the narratives that accompany them are not doing us any favors in the mental health department.
Despite all of that, FOMO never fails to get me back to social media. It’s the idea that there’s a massive audience out there, just waiting to be reached, that no one these days gets far on any business without having at least 10 thousand followers, that you have to make yourself visible in front of people first thing in the morning, as soon as they sit down on the toilet with their phones in hand, still groggy from sleep, or you won’t ever really amount to anything.
Who planted these ideas in our minds? I have my suspicions, with people who make a lot of money out of the whole set-up being at the very top of the list.
The fact is that I have been fairly successful in my writing endeavors without social media. I’ve had had enough proof that I don’t need it, and I feel bad feeding into something that it has clearly been detrimental to the mental health of so many, including myself.
Yet, my accounts are still active. And when FOMO gets me, I post.
I post, or I might lose the few followers I have.
I post, or I won’t build an audience who might buy my books should I ever get to the point of releasing one.
I post, because you have to make yourself present in different channels, you have to get people to know who you are and recognize your name.
You have to.
I’ve been trying to make up my mind on my relationship with social media. I don’t think being kind of there but not fully committed is doing me any favors, but so far, committing has proved to be impossible, since I can’t genuinely commit over a feeling of wanting to be there and not a feeling of “having to be there.”
For now, the on-again, off-again relationship continues, at least until I completely get over my fear of missing out and make a stand, until I become strong enough to ignore all of the “have to” messages and make up my own mind.
I know from experience it’s not as easy as it sounds, but I’m confident that one day I’ll get there.
