Quitting Social Media
I’m not quitting social media, though I use it probably less than most people I know. I was fascinated by the recent Guardian article about people who have closed up their social media accounts and left all platforms for good.
I know plenty of people who have left a platform, and even more who haven’t started on a platform in the first place. But no one who spends zero minutes online. Reading about the people in the article was interesting because it is so far outside my experience.
It made me think about the platforms I like—blogs and Facebook—and the platforms that don’t appeal, and why. Social media is still worth it for me; more positive than negative. It opened my world to stories and ideas I would have never encountered otherwise.
Clearly, if you’re reading this blog, you are using social media, even if you don’t write a blog yourself. So no one fits in the category of the people in the article. But I’m curious how other people processed those stories.
5 comments
Interesting. Like with everything else, I think social media comes with good and bad. I think it’s important for us to notice how different social media platforms make us feel. I quit fb and ig after I realized I rarely felt better after scrolling. I kept twitter because I have it geared toward niche interests. I barely know anyone I follow, so it’s not really anything personal. And of course, I love blogging. Reading other people’s blogs has been a lifesaver many times over, first with infertility and now with the pandemic.
I liked reading about the 21-year-old with a flip phone. When I was teaching, my middle school students would ask me all the time what life was like before the internet. I think they want to experience life without social media, but it’s just so entrenched now.
Interesting article. My best friend of many years uses almost no social media: she has a Facebook account under an alias, solely because it is faster to sign up for various things using Facebook (she never posts and has fewer than three friends), and she follows a few folks on Instagram who post on diet and fitness related topics. That’s it! She is one of several people I know personally who use little/no social media.
I regularly use Facebook and occasionally Instagram. I have never been on Twitter, TikTok or Snapchat, and I check LinkedIn a few times a year.
I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook and have taken a long-ish hiatus (a month to several weeks) from it a few times over the past several years. During each hiatus, I have found myself more productive and relaxed (after an initial 48-72-hour “detox” period), but each time I have returned.
I love it because it keeps me connected with folks from my past — quite a few of whom I genuinely enjoy having *some* connection with, and who I likely would not have reconnected with but for Facebook — and my extended family, and I do enjoy seeing photos and thoughts that my friends share.
I hate it because (1) it’s a time suck, (2) I have learned things about casual friends, family and acquaintances’ views and thoughts that I would’ve preferred not to know, (3) I don’t like being mined for my data, and . . . several other reasons that are either not immediately springing to mind or are more difficult for me to articulate.
It struck me that they are all in their 30s or younger, so have spent much of their lives surrounded by social media. I felt for the woman who lost her child at nine months gestation – I wish she had found the blogging community, who might have helped her through her grief.
I of course love (in general) our blogging community, and the friends I have made over the last 15 years or so, who are still part of my life. And I love Fbk for the positives of being in touch with all my overseas friends and family, some of whom I last saw in 1980! For me too, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. But I use Instagram only sporadically, and Twitter almost never, and I’m not much of an online shopper. As with anything, the trick is moderation and balance.
I did feel very sad for the person who said, ” …because the online life ultimately means nothing.” It is sad they haven’t found the rich relationships that can be found online.
Interesting read. Dh & I didn’t get smartphones until just before we moved, five years ago. I joined Instagram & Twitter then and WhatsApp last year (to my eternal regret — a group of dh’s cousins moved there from FB Messenger). But I’ve been on Facebook since 2009. And of course blogs & message boards before that. Of course, my generation grew up completely without social media or computers… mine was the first journalism school class to use computers (and they arrived midway through the year). Very primitive. My high school class (1979) has a group on Facebook… we have 55 members out of a class of 103 people, although some never post. We had a Zoom Christmas party with 15 people attending, and it was funny how comfortable some of us were with the technology and how many had to have their kids/grandkids help them out.
This reminded me of a conversation I had with my dh recently… he deactivates & reactivates his Facebook and Twitter accounts at whim. He unfriended everyone on Instagram (including his cousins) with the exception of me, his brother, SIL, our two nephews & their wives. He drives me nuts. (eyeroll) I would feel so guilty cutting off his cousins (even if I don’t see eye to eye with some of them…), because, family… he says he’s an outcast among most of them anyway so he doesn’t care. I think it’s just another way that women worry incessantly about what other people think and feel guilty about things men don’t give two seconds thought to, and how we’re expected to be the caretakers and maintain family connections.
I have not quit any of my social media accounts, but I have tried to become more judicious about how I use them. I very rarely unfriend people, but I’ve been much more liberal with the “unfollow” & “snooze” buttons in recent months. 😉
Interesting that one woman in the story gave up social media after she lost a baby. My loss (& infertility treatment, and transition to childless/free living) was pre-social media. I’ve often said I can’t imagine how I would have survived without the support I found online… but at the same time, I am SO glad I did not have to do it under the pressure of social media and all the photos of happy families with healthy, living babies either…!
Fascinating that so many are so young. I’m with Sharon for my own love/hate with Facebook. Similar reasons on both sides! And I liked what the last woman said: “Why do I feel the need to show people?” I feel that way about many things, like donations and charitable stuff. I feel like in a weird way if you need everyone to know that you’re doing it, maybe it’s not for the right reason. I’m not on Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok. I thought about Instagram, but I just don’t want one more thing to check and suck my time away. I do see my attention suffering. Great read!