As a 90s kid, I grew up in an era before smartphones and social media. I am thankful for this for one simple reason, I remember a time before life became performative. I recall experiencing every moment I wanted to remember, rather than losing it in favor of recording the moment for posterity. I am also so thankful that I navigated the turbulent teenage years without the additional hurdle of social media and all the pressures that come with it.
I am also, for this same reason, concerned about the children who are growing up in this era in which appearances matter so much, and people are put on a pedestal simply based on the number of their social media followers. Just a little caveat before I proceed further. I am not claiming that social media has no uses whatsoever. It has brought the world closer together and helps people keep in touch. However, it has just ceased to work for me.
I was increasingly beginning to feel like the people on my social media were less of friends and more of acquaintances. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I actually had a conversation with most of them. Plus knowing about each other’s lives simply through one another’s status updates did not feel much like a meaningful way of keeping in touch.
I hear it from everyone. From my friends, from that little voice inside my head that told me that I needed to get off my phone. We walk around with our phones in our faces, and our phone addiction is making it more and more difficult for us to connect.
Social media allows people to judge me based on something superficial.
Living a life without social media is a lifestyle change that I have been dying to take for ages. I was aware of how social media has worsened my anxieties ever since I started living with it. So about six months back, I decided to ditch social media. My Snapchat was already inactive, my Facebook account was the scene of a mediocre family function, and after scrolling my life away on Instagram’s infinite home feed, I decided that could go, too.
LinkedIn was tricky. I kept it because that is where I occasionally check for career opportunities. Now, I feel more present: Without my social media crutch, I started to look around more, talk a lot more, and interact with people within close proximity of me. Looking good also equated to feeling good because immediate gratification was no longer an option.
While I was on social media platforms, they had become my default go-to whenever I felt bored. As soon as I stopped defaulting to scrolling on these, however, I realized that knowing when I am bored, helped me realize that I need to be doing more meaningful things with my time. I recall when I was on social media the temptation to take one perfect picture wherever I went. Detoxification from social media made me question if I was doing that to garner appreciation from people who are practically strangers to me, or for my own enjoyment.
All this is not to say that I do not take pictures anymore. The removal of social media from the equation makes things much simpler and more meaningful. As someone who goes and looks at all our old photo albums, making and recording memories does matter a lot to me.
I am just glad that I am now making and storing all these memories for myself and my family rather than for my imagined audience online. FOMO ( fear of missing out) stopped being a thing: I realized that my point of reference was me. I did not go where other people went or do what other people did because I had no idea what everyone else was up to.
With so much free time on my hands, it allowed me to go into a deep level of introspection to help me figure out what I truly want out of life. With my time off social media, one thing that I absolutely enjoyed was my privacy. It seems like nowadays, with just a simple search, people can instantly depict who you are as a person based on your social media profile.
With this in mind, it also allows people to learn everything about you in just a couple of seconds. I focused on myself, not checking up on everyone’s new house or car, and felt bad about my life. Think of it like when you are in grade school and taking the exams. When you see everyone else submitting their papers one by one, you start to panic. You tend to rush things. I have been more productive: With more hours for myself in the day, I started writing more. I have written several poems, articles, and journal entries since. The life I was living became more clear to me: I evaluated my career and relationships and realized which of them needed to be cut. I was face-to-face with my dissatisfaction, and couldn’t hide behind a facade because there wasn’t one. This gave me all the time I needed to sit back and reconstruct my narrative without the pressure of comparison.
Social media allows people to judge me based on something superficial. Instead of letting people determine who I am as a person based on my social media profile. I have read many books too, including a 450-page novel in two days! Social media takes so much of our time. It is always good to take a step back and reflect on life, to enjoy a quiet time even if that means having a social media detox for a day or a week, or even a year.
Gradually I have created a life more deeply grounded in real life, intimately interwoven with the people, places and things that I love and which genuinely enrich my life. It is not that I refuse to carry on with the digital changes, and the modernization we are going through. However, living a life without social media is the life I want to continue. Life is short, how do you want to spend your precious time, online or connected to all the raw beauty of a deeply embedded human life on earth?
The writer is an ex-banker and a freelance columnist. She can be reached at tbjs.cancer.[email protected]