A look back on 'Week One Without Social Media.'
And how my relationship with it changed since then.
I’m going to show my age here; I’ve worked in online community management since before Instagram was invented.
If I met someone at a bar in my 20s and we wanted to be friends, we would friend request each other on Facebook. A stranger! *gasp* I witnessed the entire rise and fall of Vine. I was there when X was not Twitter but twtta and the logo was a goopy green. And as you’ve undoubtedly gathered by now; I was there through the lovely era of Myspace.
My professional career became inextricably knit into the ever-growing web of social media as I started working in the 2010s. Our lives became trapped in that web as well. It’s both entertainment and news, social network and marketing platform. But throughout the years, my job became dependent on it.
At first, it was a way to chatter with fans of the video games I worked for. I shared their user-generated content on our platforms as a way to foster community. I forwarded complaints. I posted announcements. Using social media in a professional capacity back then was very near the reason we all used it personally; connection.
Then marketing got its claws into it.
My job(s) quickly became filled with a sense of urgency as social networks became both fast and furious. Virality was an achievement everyone wanted - needed - to reach. Budgets were allotted for advertisements and strategies were created, which had to be tested first to come to learnings that we now know today. Through that testing, the boundaries of work were broken in an “always on” mentality since social media next slept, and never ended.
Social media took another leap forward during the pandemic, one I both did and didn’t see coming. It was a way to feel that we all - globally - were not alone. But in that time, everything I mentioned above took an enormous leap forward in saturation and urgency. I have never seen an era of social media marketing like what came out of the pandemic.
And so in November of last year, I deleted it all for a week and I wrote an article about it.
It came after a year of adjusting my connection to media and my availability to people. By November 2023 I had set strict boundaries with the way people could reach me. I took all the red dots off of apps on my phone that notified you of a waiting message. I blocked all notifications of email and Slack on my phone, even during working hours. When Apple pushed this update, I set scheduled Do Not Disturb times that blocked, and still block, any texts from coworkers starting at 5:30 pm every day.
Even after that, I kept those social apps on my phone (mostly for work, unfortunately) until I finally decided to delete them. You can read my observations and outcomes below, but today, I’d like to talk about what has changed since then since at the end of Week 1 Without Social Media, I left it open-ended as to where I’d go from there.
It’s my on-again, off-again toxic boyfriend, BUT...
Despite its accuracy, that could not have been a worse way to describe it. What I mean is this. Social media will never not be toxic. It will never not be filled with terrible takes, awful comments, and toxic marketing.
It will never not be a curated reality through a lens of unattainable perfection.
However, I do believe that underneath that all, the point of it will always remain, and that is social connection.
There are people on Instagram that I couldn’t tell you how I met, but we chat about the silly nonsense we post on our Stories. We’ve gotten to know our shared interests and swap memes of them, sometimes not saying anything more than that for months. Corn dogs memes. Funny raccoons. King Of The Hill references.
It’s where I met my writing group. It’s how I keep in touch with former coworkers who have left the country. I still talk to people from high school on there!
It’s how I learn about other cultures from throughout the world, whether that is TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram. Facebook is how my distant relatives know what I’m up to, or where they reach out when they’re thinking of me and I am also a frequenter of Facebook Marketplace.
But I’ve come to learn that there is a limit to what I can take and when to walk away.
Social Media companies make it very easy to download.
While this again is a double-edged sword - the ease of which anyone can create an account - it also works in my favor. If I’ve had enough, I just delete it and when I need to go back on for work, or if I feel the need to reconnect with friends, it takes less than a minute to just redownload it and log in with the saved passwords.
This has vastly improved my mental health. I also don’t think many people realize they have that choice. Social Media isn’t permanently stuck to your side. You don’t have to be on it, and I think those who are chronically online can benefit from those breaks, knowing that should you want to feel a connection across the internet again, it’s still right there.
It’s not going anywhere.
The impulse to share everything is gone.
I write about this in Week 1 Without Social Media but during the pandemic I shared everything. We all did if we’re being honest. It was almost an impulse to want to put a photo of everything I did online. If it’s not on Instagram, it didn’t happen, right?
It’s very freeing to not feel that way anymore. I still love to share my garden pictures. I’m proud of it and I have other friends on Instagram who garden as well. Every concert I go to I post because when I look back at my feed a year later it’s quite cool to see how many shows I went to. The 17-year-old Kate who posted 100 photos from a digital camera into a Facebook album could never have imagined I’d see so many shows in a year (and only need to post one photo from it! Maybe two!).
But all that to say, I’ve rewired my brain to keep moments for myself and only me.
In the end, it’s a tool and you choose how you use it.
My partner does not use Instagram. He has a Facebook, but it has sat dormant for probably a decade. He doesn’t need LinkedIn and has never once made a Twitter account. He has a TikTok only for viewing and doesn’t even have a profile picture.
It’s an entertainment and learning tool for him. The only time he’s ever on the internet is watching TikToks on interesting facts, or YouTube How-To’s, or searching Wikipedia for information for a video game.
For me, it’s a tool I use for work, but it’s also a tool I use to connect. There’s not just one way to use it, but it’s just about finding the right balance so like many tools, it doesn’t end up hurting you.
And with that, I start my annual July staycation with no social media and barely any communication with the world outside my little bubble. I even delete Slack and email off my phone to be utterly unreachable by work.
I will spend my days with coffee and books on my backyard swing, learning how to care for the four gallons of roses I impulse bought, making bread and craft cocktails, and sharing none of it with you 🙃.
Enjoy the staycation! I took IG off my phone for this long weekend too; it's been a nice little break so far.