2 Months off Social Media

I decided yesterday (February 6) that I would not use any social media platforms for two months.

My reasons were pretty straight forward:

1. I want to be more creative, and that doesn’t come when you are consuming all the time. In recent years, I’ve noticed my focus is less, my ability to imagine is lower, and I think that this correlates to the use of social media. I’m of the conspiracy theory that we’ve been given many of these apps to distract us from our purpose and ability to be productive - We’ll see if this hypothesis is correct.

2. I have a couple important projects I want to move well along. You’ll see how far (or not far) I come in two months time. This blog is one of them.

3. I’ve been pretty disenfranchised with the whole thing for a while. There’s a lot of fakery - I know a lot of these people in real life, and they are not like their “personas” on social media - they curate their content, make themselves look more happy than they really are, and are part of the growing “authenticity gap” that has plagued this stuff from day one.

There’s real people on these apps, but they are few and far between. Most of this stuff is just acting, and I want less and less a part of it.

4. Social media like Instagram is softcore pornography. I say this as a sweeping statement, and I’m not just talking about female bodies; I’m talking about cars, mansions, etc. that make you think that you’ve made it when you haven’t.

5. I recently deleted Twitter due to their political stance and inability to create a place of free speech. This isn’t a “Right vs. Left” problem, this is a Right vs. Wrong problem, and I will not stand for the censorship of people that have differing opinions, regardless of what those opinions are.

I believe Twitter was an echo chamber anyway (just how the app is structured), and this doesn’t help you to broaden your mind, gain perspective, or grow as a human being.

6. I’ve already been using Facebook very infrequently, I’ve had the Kill All News Feeds extension installed for sometime now. This effectively makes Facebook only about receiving messages from people. I could see myself deleting it in the near future (and perhaps after this experiment).

The argument I had with myself has been “oh I need it for business”, but the ROI on ads has not been there for some time, people are migrating more and more away from it, and with the recent Whatsapp scandal, I see it as a sinking ship.

7. I want to evaluate how this break affects my mental health. I’ll elaborate on this more in the review post.

This hiatus includes the following social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (deleted), Tik Tok (see my opinion on this app below), and Snapchat (I’ve had this deleted for almost a year now, if there was one pointless app, it was this one.).

I see value in Youtube and Reddit. Youtube (if you use it correctly) will teach you how to do nearly anything on Earth, and Reddit is secondary only to Stackoverflow for programming knowledge (and in some cases, is better). I get tremendous value from both of these apps, and have used them to learn recently about baking, fixing issues I’ve had in the apps I work on, and how to do numerous things from troubleshooting my gas fireplace to how to grow microgreens.

I am excited to get this underway, and will be documenting my thoughts and feelings in a post at the end of the challenge. I don’t really feel as if I have anything to lose with this, and MUCH to gain.

And before you call me a hermit or the next Unabomber, take a look in the mirror, evaluate your own social usage, and see if it’s actually healthy. I know people that can’t even hold eye contact anymore or are constantly on their phones when their with their friends, and they’d be lying to themselves if they think their use of the phone and social apps is anything but antisocial.