We don’t really need to be on social media, despite how society makes it seem. I’ve been living without a social media account for almost ten years and it’s been fine. Let me tell you how my experience was.
Why I deleted my accounts
Everything we know now about the impact of social media on our mental health and society, we already knew ten years ago. I experienced it first hand.
Comparisons that kill happiness
I can have a great morning but suddenly feel miserable because I signed on to Facebook and saw what exciting thing someone else is doing. My lovely morning at home reading a book suddenly feels dull.
But the thing is, I love reading and if you ask me to define a good life, it would involve reading too much. Checking social media feeds makes me miserable doing what I love.
I could go out with friends, explore a new city, and have fun, but it wasn’t enough to combat the jealousy that comes from comparison. I’d glance at my feed and see someone else exploring an even more unique place. No one can win.
Insults and arguments
As a writer for the web, I have a professional incentive to have a social media presence. I was brought to MakeUseOf because someone contacted me via Twitter. Yet I found the task of promoting myself online anxiety-inducing. I spent a lot of time deliberating on what to write in 140 characters. The stakes felt much higher when anyone in the world, at any time, could make some cruel comment in response to something I said.
I was tired of arguing with high school friends who, frankly, I would have lost touch with if we weren’t friends on Facebook. I could have wasted my entire week in unnecessary arguments over our opinions, politics, or anything else. These arguments go deeper than just bitterness with strangers, because the person on the other side, at least at one point, knew who I was. We may be strangers, but that’s not always the case.
My mind is much calmer now
I noticed an immediate improvement after deleting my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Without Twitter, I could focus on the work itself, instead of thinking about how to promote my work.
This worked out fine for me. I’m not a freelance content creator. For the sites I write for, it’s someone else’s job to promote what we write. I just focus on making sure they have articles worth promoting. I’m not the only writer here who has noticed a productivity boost from not having social media apps at least on their phone.
Without Facebook, I’ve lost touch with people from high school who I wouldn’t have kept in touch with anyway. That’s okay. To live a good life we need the ability to forget, grow and move on from the people we were before we became adults.
One of the things that makes families difficult is the comparison between who we are today and who we were as teenagers. What makes friendships so lovely is that our friends know and like us for who we are now.
I feel less jealous of others now. When I wake up in the morning and spend time in the garden, I don’t have a feed showing me that someone else has a more beautiful car. When I buy a car, I’m not immediately shown that someone I know bought the car I could have bought if I was able to afford it. When I decide I like my wardrobe, I’m not surrounded by the most glamorous people showing me that my wardrobe could be even better.
I don’t know
FOMO is a big part of what keeps people on social media. It’s the way many people get their news. It’s the way they find out about events. Yes, if you delete your social media accounts, you’ll miss out on some of the things you only see on social media. The opposite is also true.
By prioritizing social media, you may miss out on alternative ways to find out what’s going on in the world. Time spent browsing social media feeds is not the same as time spent reading a high-quality magazine. Finding out what neighbors are doing online can make you feel so connected that you don’t need to go to the local library to find out what events are going on just a few minutes away. Social media can make it difficult to separate groupthink and perceived truth from reality.