How quitting Facebook will make you regain your valuable social life

I have been active on Facebook since 2007, that was almost 10 years ago! Can you imagine it has been a decade already? Have you thought of the hundreds of hours wasted on such a waste of bits and electrons (or whatever the computer is made of)? Not to mention that since I am Egyptian, we came up with using social media in changing our country’s regime and maybe the entire region’s. Which led to what you are watching now on the news. So, eventually people using Facebook in Egypt reached 26 million users!! One of the biggest countries worldwide using Facebook outside the US. It had a huge impact on our social and political life. Over the last 3 years it literally engulfed us all into a virtual stagnant depressing bubble, it’s nothing but crushing and heart breaking news and posts, lies and crap. On top of that, I couldn’t care less for people posting their lunch on the River Nile or their cup of coffee in Starbucks. *to be fair I was once one of those zombies*

People’s lives are not what they are on Instagram. It’s not all shopping and sushi bars. It’s way far from what they seem to be on their accounts. Gives you a false perspective of what is really out there.

Social media in general became nothing but a show off, useless people with shallow minds speaking up their irrational thoughts and crap and you for the sake of “freedom of speech and crap like that” have to live with that. But NO MORE, I decided to shut this shit once and for all. I wanna live my way, my rules, not to be judged by social media and its trends. I don’t have to post every single step I am taking to collect likes and retweets, to gain social acceptance and the quality stamp. Or to ensure people following me that I am super happy with my life and business trips, or how fucking wise I am, or to share my Caramel Chilled Latte at Starbucks.

I have lost my job in Dubai, my earnings and my self-esteem this year. I was up to my nose in debt. This made my interaction with people over the internet through social media more difficult than I expected, not to mention how stressed and anxious I felt while dealing with them in the real world. There was no place for me there. Not that I hate to see people happy, but REALLY I didn’t feel good about seeing a couple happily traveling to Europe for their honeymoon, or that guy getting awarded employee of the year. Later, that all made sense when I was diagnosed with moderate Major Depression *click here — 350 million people worldwide suffer from Major Depression -WHO* and one of its classic symptoms was SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL, feeling unwanted, unfit, and much of a burden or a turn off for whoever is around me. I couldn’t help it and it was out of my control, *click here to check major depression symptoms on WebMD*.I would say that also helped in easily deactivating all of my social media accounts.

That day September 21st, 2016 at the peak of one my depression cycles. I deleted all of my social media apps, deactivated Facebook, and life was back again to how it was before 2007.

I had 816 friends on Facebook, 6,000 twitter followers. 745 posts on Instagram, and started using Snapchat lately. When I started therapy, my psychiatrist was not happy with the fact I am getting away from people like this, but I wanted to return back to my friends and family like a normal human being would do, calling them checking on them, then meeting them in person and having actual meaningful conversations. With people whom I really cared for and whom cared for me. I thought I had more than 800 friends when actually who were there for me were merely 6–7 people. When I was withdrawn, they bothered to literally call me or even dropped by at home checking on me. That’s when I realized I was so grateful for having such people in my life. They made me feel better than all of the fake likes and retweets I had for the last 10 years combined. Since I am not that good at expressing my feelings *as per my psychiatrist* I felt bad about me not able to tell them how much they meant to me, I started developing a little bit of a way to express my feelings and eventually I would be able to clear things up. If you haven’t noticed we barely express any feelings these days, we all resort to emoticons and texting on our phones. Maybe that’s why I had a problem.

Connecting with my friends and family in the real world helped me get out of my depression episode. They helped me with therapy to prevent myself from committing suicide on several occasions.

Ok, so far so good. Now my phone is rarely sending me any notifications. I barely picked up my phone.*I one day tracked how many hours I wasted on social media in a week, Facebook alone wasted 9 hours a day collectively!!!!* think of all the time you can make use of.

Day by day, my usual day became really longer and more relax. There are hours that I didn’t know what to do, so I just went out and jogged. Moreover, I started surfing the internet and that’s when I knew about Medium. Medium now is the app replacing Facebook on my Social Media Folder on my iPhone.

Now, 80 days has passed. Not one day did I get back on any of these apps, also I learnt German, I played squash for the first time, played more table tennis, done my first online job as a freelance content writer, my work schedule is more organized, and best of all, my mind is clearer and focused on what’s important for ME, and what I wanted with no judgments and peer pressure. I finally can hang out with my friends and family without having to check my phone every single minute, I can even survive in a non- Wifi cafe!!!

I encouraged everyone I knew to do so, it’s a liberating feeling, it’s like to quit smoking. It’s like I am back to being a normal actual human being. Not a virtual robot.

Tell me how many days can you survive without ur social media apps and share it in the comments section.

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