On Quitting Social Media

When I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts, I didn’t think it was a big deal. In fact, I didn’t think anyone would notice. I wasn’t posting on a regular basis, I didn’t have a brand, I wasn’t trying to influence anybody for anything. Just posting pieces of my life that I thought were interesting and well… (I’m not afraid to admit) cute photos of me.

To my surprise I received messages and calls “are you ok? are you alive? you disappeared!” OK- it felt nice to be missed… but I reconsidered what deleting my accounts meant. In a way, I felt I was betraying my friends, my social circle. And many of my friendships did suffer from the lack of engagement, especially ones that were long-distance or mere acquaintances. I was losing a part of my life in a way, I thought, the connectedness, knowledge of other people’s lives. But did this truly impact my life? Did I go through long periods of withdrawal? No, not really. At points I would experience FOMO (fear of missing out) but for the most part, it was a relief- not having to manage an online version of myself.

When people ask me why I left, I say that it just wasn’t for me. The larger truth of the matter was at the time I deleted my accounts, I was working through mental health and body-image issues. I know how many people grapple with the same problems, and I can make the argument that social media only exacerbates these problems (I even wrote about a psychology research report on the effects of social media on women’s self-esteem in college, which only seemed to confirm everything I had been feeling). I deactivated my accounts because it was the right thing to do for me; all of the negatives outweighed the positives of staying connected. And it even increased my productivity, my reading habits, my self-image. It was an awkward relief, not recording every activity, scene, and relationship that was important. I just lived my life in the moment (how cliche!) No one needed to know what I was doing every second of the day, I had nothing to prove. Whether we stare at our screens out of boredom or self-obsession, the constant glaring at a screen to count likes start to detract from the real advantages of digital connections.

In truth, I dislike having the social media conversation because it feels hackneyed, overwritten about, over discussed. It is not that it is difficult to find something original to say about the negative consequences of social media, but rather that the truth in any form is brightly dismissed, even when it is held as a conviction. The reality of social media has been playing on a broken record the whole time, and people keep on dancing to the tune. This is the scariest part for me; my generation complains about the superficiality and negative side effects of social media MORE than than their parents, or older generations (which is a lot of complaining). It is a discussion I’ve had a thousand times, and have heard even more. It is almost the status quo, the cool thing, at this point to pretend you hate it (or at least don’t care about) but continue to post. Everyone falls prey to this, I am a culprit too. I suppose it is the addiction, the scary part of continuing an activity that a. you feel is unhealthy for you and b. you feel is too time-consuming. We are all looped into playing a game even when we don’t want to play anymore. So why is it so hard to press the delete button? To let go of the catalogue of selfies, memories, and cafes that constitute our lives, our pages? Everyone wants to be seen, connected, and it is the fear of losing visibility, the erasure that is more daunting to us than being pointed to and laughed at.

I remember the first time I heard about Instagram my freshman year of high school. The coolest kid in our class had downloaded it, and was showing me all the pictures he had posted: one of an american flag, the other of a huge fish he had caught. I then downloaded the app too, still unsure of the concept, but willing to follow him and his fish. The first picture I posted was of my dirty white vans sitting on my mom’s dashboard: sepia filter. It was a terrible photo, objectively, but it did not register, I did not care, or more so, I did not know. My first year of posting was just as casual and unaware: small videos of my brother playing guitar, cheesy quotes, and blurry pictures of old cars driving too fast on the street. And then more and more people had Instagrams, more and more people posted pictures of themselves, their bodies, their faces, and it started to change the landscape. Sophomore and Junior year, when things are naturally getting more difficult, more pimple-y, I would hear about all the DM hook-up stories in the hallways… boys “sliding into DM’s” of the hottest girls’ pages, and Instagram essentially became a portal for hook-ups. At the time, I was secretly hurt no one was messaging me, internalizing the fact as I wasn’t pretty enough, skinny enough, which, in part, was true compared to all of the popular photos. The comparisons were now live; one could stalk Stephanie, one could watch Chandler kiss her boyfriend at sunset, or Charlie play beer pong at a party and the “I wish it was me… what’s wrong with me that it isn’t” became the defining feeling of Junior year. This no doubt has existed in high school’s since the beginning; the popular kids who had the better life, but now it was all laid out in pictures, comments, video stories that you would watch and watch and watch until you felt extremely bad about yourself. And I had many amazing friends, but I wasn’t necessarily “cool.” The definition of “cool” has changed drastically. Social media has created, or rather, amplified a whole new social hierarchy (the closest model I can think of is in “22 Jump Street”). Now the social categories are visible, definable online, but they aren’t the same categories we see in the Breakfast Club. The cheerleaders and football players no longer rule; a new brand of hipster, cool kids emerged, ones who party on the deck of their parent’s beach front mansion and had dark personalities they would advertise through khakis pants rolled at the ankles, longer hair tucked under a beanie, and a vape pen. You could see the pictures on Instagram, which were always “candid,” and you could gawk at their private reality that was all too desirable for the social outsider. The cool kid, the one who showed me a picture of his rainbow trout, now has over 38K followers and is an influencer model.

It is unhealthy to view the past through a succession of images tailored for another’s gaze, because whether it is intentional or not, the decisions (angle, filter, light) are influenced by others and how they will perceive you. It is the insecurity from being too aware of all that is not yours. It is your un-lived life lived out by others: strangers, family, friends, who by extension, are each in their own private digital world of pretending to be, pretending to know, and shamelessly confining themselves to an aesthetic, brand, look, online personality.

Am I ranting? I don’t mean to rant… but this is what my feelings are reduced to when I speak about social media. I will get to the point. When you look in the mirror and see a less amiable version of yourself in comparison to the lens of your screen, you are in a dangerous spot. If you are here, I want to tell you to quit if you want to quit. To stop looking, scrolling, liking all the perfect bodies and celebrity lifestyles that make yours look like a dump. I know how difficult this actually is, and it is easier said than done, but I challenge you to evaluate the effects and make a clear decision. And if you do quit social media, and you feel the all pervading and overwhelming sense that life continues, it continues even when it stops for you, without you, and all the spinning makes you dizzy, know that you are getting better.