What I learned from deleting Social Media
I decided to deactivate my social media accounts after being alarmed at my ever increasing screen time on my phone. I figured that, if I deactivated my social media accounts, I’d be bound to spend less time scrolling mindlessly on my phone. I set myself the target of going one week without Facebook and Instagram. I thought this would be a challenge but I really wanted to do something to cut down on my screen time. The result was surprising. It was actually incredibly easy to be without these apps that I had spent so much time using. In fact, by day 3, I decided I was not going to re-download them as I just didn’t miss them. Here is what I learnt during the first week of no social media.
A lot of pressure comes with maintaining a presence on social media sites and I think we are often unaware of it until we take a step back. We are trying to present our lives in a way that makes us look good. We take selfies under flattering lights and photoshop or edit out any blemishes. We only post photos of things or places we decide will be interesting to other people and we try to formulate snappy captions to manage whatever imagine of ourselves we are trying to create on the platform. It’s rare to see a post on Instagram that isn’t trying to conform to some unrealistic standard of perfection. By doing this, we are modifying ourselves and our lifestyles to seek approval and gratification from others. This leads us to follow different trends and visit vacation spots that are currently fashionable on Instagram. Did we really want to go to Santorini or was that mainly to take some instagrammable photos to make our followers jealous?
I also found spending large amounts of time on social media to be an information overload. I follow and was followed by hundreds of people and I was beginning to find this too much. As I took a step back, I realised that there is no reason to engage with so many people, especially given that I wasn’t friends with nor did I really even know most of those people in real life. I began wondering why we follow quite so many people and the most obvious reason I could think of was to try to fit in by having a large following (many friends) and lots of likes. Realistically, we aren’t interested in most of the posts we see on our timeline. We, subconsciously, form judgements, make comparisons and move on to the next post where we do it again. It’s difficult to avoid experiencing feelings of inadequacy, when we scroll through hundreds of “idealised” photos a day and compare ourselves to this “norm”.
Without social media, I judge myself and others less. I’m no longer comparing myself to unrealistic standards created by so-called fitness influencers, among others. I don’t require acceptance of my choices in the form of likes and high engagement on my posts. Similarly, I don’t judge or form opinions on others based on their online content and the number of likes they receive. I don’t engage with hashtags such as #relationshipgoals and read posts about how a particular user has not argued with their partner since the coronavirus lockdowns began and make unhealthy comparisons with my own situation.
Since deactivating my accounts, I am more present in the moment. I make choices based solely on what I want to do, without consideration of what looks good. I would have vowed that I did this before, but, upon reflection, it would be naive to say wholeheartedly that instagram never played a factor in my decision making process. I, now, don’t worry about how my photographs will be received by others and, thus, my life has become more authentically mine. And, surprisingly, deactivating my accounts has not been difficult. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be freeing.