Celebrities Quit Social Media — Should We Take the Hint?
Several A-list celebrities have taken “breaks” from social media due to a handfull of various reasons. Some of these celebrities include: Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Iggy Azalea to name a few. The reasons for their decisions to deactivate and take a breather from the realm of social media range from Justin Bieber receiving hate comments on his pictures with his then girlfriend Sofia Richie, to Miley Cyrus deleting her Twitter simply because her fiancee, Liam Hemsworth, wanted her to. The one thing all of these celebs have in common is that they were all able to see the benefits of putting a hiatus on their social media activity — or at least they were able to see more positive than negative repercussions of their decision.
In case you were wondering what could possibly come out of deleting your precious Instagram or Twitter accounts, I took it upon myself to conduct some further research on the matter. I found an interesting article written by Akshata Shanbhag who earlier this year decided to delete all platforms of social media. In her article titled, “What Happens When You Quit Social Media? I Found Out,” Shanbhag initially writes that quitting was the easy part of the cleansing. In doing so, she experienced some shocking reactions from her peers. She tweeted, “Debating quitting social media because I don’t get the likes I deserve,” only to get a tweet back from a random person saying, “if you quit social media then you won’t get any likes anymore at all.” Hmm, that’s a pretty aggressive response if you ask me. However, snide responses like these are not enough to get her to reactivate.
Shanbhag admits to feeling lost at first when she would open her computer to log into Facebook, only to realize it was so longer there. She found herself blankly staring at her screen, until she discovered new distractions online — including new hobbies and even reading interesting newsletters. Eventually, though, she came across another consequence of quitting social media: feeling extremely out of the loop.
You would be surprised at how much of our everyday conversations actually stem from what we are exposed to via social media. This is exactly why Shanbhag felt like she was not in the know. She writes, “Want to see your friend’s vacation photos? You’ll have to wait for her to mail them to you.” Yikes, that sounds awful. But fret not, Shanbhag does inform us that there are other means of communication you can use to keep up with your friends such as WhatsApp.
Another obstacle faced by Shanbhag in her new social media-free world, is the fact that because we live in such a media centric society, most websites require you to log in using your Facebook or Google+ accounts. Lastly, quitting social media proved to be detrimental to job hunting. Nowadays, employers search for potential employees online and even require you to be inept in your social media skills. In some cases, social media skills even take precedence over the technical skills required for that particular job.
The moral of the story here is, next time you think that you’ve really just had it with not getting enough likes on your Instagram posts, you might want to think twice about deleting your account — it might cost you yours friends…or even a potential job.
