More Than A Year Without Social Media

Last year I decided to delete my Instagram and Facebook completely. Yes DELETED not deactivated (which I have done many times, doesn’t work). 

It’s not that I was waiting for a pandemic to hit and my screen time was getting increased only during this time. I was using mostly Instagram before 2020, and I barely used Facebook after I left school. But after the pandemic the situation was really different. I was indeed noticing that I was spending way too much time around social media and at one point I was worn out with all the mess incl. the good memes I was looking at all day.

And honestly one thing which I noticed is that these products are just toying with our engagements and attention. The more you give, the more you will be drawn to it. But once you leave that space, you don’t even want to come back to it.

Here I am writing or rather chalking out the whole process after the day I deleted my account

1. What I noticed in the first days and weeks

It was damn hard. I won’t even lie. I consider myself as very normal and with normal comes an average or fairly good ability to control myself. But as I said I deleted my account, there was no way I could login. Few weeks were horrible.

The Instagram app was not there anymore in my phone, and the meaningless scrolling with one eye open and one closed right in the morning was gone. But habits... instead I started scrolling my WhatsApp and used to lock my phone with a sigh of disappointment.

2. About to Fall back

I started doubting on why I started with this. I was making plans on how I will devote less time and that will limit my whole usage. I was making so many excuses, which I am glad I didn't fall for.

3. When OTHER’S noticed?

I got a few texts after a month asking have I deleted my account, why am I not able to search you? I don’t see any memes nowadays from you! And that’s just proof that it took a month or two for anyone to notice, that the reality is that unless you’re in that system and cycle of posting, liking, sharing, commenting and stuff, you’re irrelevant. It’s not that your absence is even noticed because the system is moving so fast that you have to be in it in order to be seen.

And the people who are anyway in touch with you, who call you and text you are already your people, they are there with you no matter what. I am not against having a bigger virtual circle, but when we are living our life through that and comparing ourselves through that it can lead to a very dangerous state of not knowing your own identity.

4. Living for strangers

What I started observing is that we are living for people whom we are never going to actually meet, and neglecting those that are going to be here forever, our family, friends and closed ones who are creating real live interactions everyday and we are living for these online interactions.

5. Filling the dead space

With not doing anything comes dead space which I had always a go to solution, grab my phone and check Instagram. It’s not that dead space is bad, but what we choose to fill in with is. For me it was equating on the negative side, rather than making me happy or feel good.

I started filling the dead spaces with other things, I started writing, I called my family and friends and video called them that time or picked up that half read book or sometimes just sat doing nothing. 

6. I want your attention

The more I see apps like this evolving by time, it is becoming more noisier, more filtered and people around these app are becoming more crazier. People are doing stuff out of the box to just grab your 30 seconds of attention. The more you are stimulated with this loud music and motion, the more it will keep you outside the real world and more you will spend your time in this app.

7. Know how to spend time with yourself

This is a lost case for a lot of us! It is really a challenge when we want to spend time by ourselves. A minute we are alone and not doing any work. We quickly take out our phone and go through a pointless scrolling loop till we are back again with some other work. Spending time with yourself is the greatest and most important thing in order to be present here.

8. Fear of missing out

Yes sure! This is an inevitable part, you will miss out on some stuff which maybe made you a more socialized person but the truth is that whatever you gain will be so so much better. The awareness you gain in your life, the goals which you set and actually working and accomplishing it. You will be responsible for you without comparing yourself to anyone online which leaves most of us feeling awful about us.

9. Ridiculous habit of short attention time span

It was so frustrating sometimes when I would be able to just look at the screen for hours with packed funny memes and videos of 30 second and 1 minutes. But it would be so hard when I sit for 30 minutes to study some concept.

Well it’s not you, our brains are a very powerful two sided sword, it has slowly or steadily captured that you have a very short amount of attention time/window and you become restless if anything is above that. And many things here in the actual world need your attention more than a tik tok video timeline. 

10. Let go of the judgments!

Back when I was active in social media I was also caught up in a weird rat race that if a person doesn’t have an Instagram handle to show off or doesn’t put stories everyday then they are boring, and they don’t have any life. And also accompanied in  passing judgements on how on earth at this age of internet people choose not to have one account! Something must be wrong with them. 

Well! It revolved around and came back to me like a boomerang. Nothing is wrong with you if you choose to opt out. There are no frameworks here so stop blindly following one. It’s as simple as analyzing - if having or checking or posting in your social media makes you happy, gets your work done and gives you positivity then go for it. But if not you must quit this race.

Don’t let your online world disconnect you with your offline/actual/present world.

I hope you enjoyed this post, I generally post every Wednesday and Saturday. Subscribe below to get more interesting write-ups. I won’t spam you, promise 👀