Here is the final installment on my series about leaving social media and time wasting apps. If you’ve made it through them all, thank you so much for giving your time up to read these. For Part 1, click here! For Part 2, click here! For Part 3, click here! For Part 4, click here!
Since breaking up with socials and time wasting apps, my life looks a little more analog than it used to. I wish it looked even moreso, but each time I threaten to abandon all technology and my iPhone, I remember how much I love having audiobooks, streaming music, and GPS and I have to content myself with the progress I have made.
Just like the most strict of dieters will have a slice of cake at a birthday, or munch on candy at a Christmas party, I have slip ups back into the internet spiral. While I am joyfully disinterested in using social media as it has been reinvented (perhaps more on this another day), I have been known to reinstall YouTube on my phone when sick or recovering from a medical issue. Granted, a lot of what I watch is on education and journaling, but eventually that algorithm drops me into “You can buy WHAT from a Japanese vending machine??” And after a day or two of finding myself swept down the stream of those polluted waters, I gasp up from the surface and delete the app again, and reserve another library book.
I find myself enjoying catching up with friends when we meet up in person and being able to ask “what’s new with you?” And everything they tell me is actually new. I didn’t get to watch the live version, but I’ll happily get the replay over a glass of sparkling water and an appetizer. This is one of the most delightful perks of not being on Instagram– actually being able to discuss life events with no “Oh yeah, I saw that on your stories!”
It is also interesting to have to relay the same information about a family issue, fun vacation, or health crisis to different people in person multiple times, instead of it being blasted via a one-and-done post on Facebook. I’ve begun to work on the art of summarizing concisely for the right audience. This will be a life long lesson, for as you can tell I do not excel at brevity.
I’d like to say I would never return to social media. I have kept my accounts open thus far as a way to buy used curriculum or furniture on Facebook and as a way to get addresses from people with whom I am connected on Instagram. But while I have not been tempted to head to the timeline time-warp yet, I don’t know if it’s all bets off for life. I’ve been humbled one too many times to say never. I just hope that if I do, I don’t use it as often or in the same way I used to.
That being said, I am thankful for what this nearly 2 year breakup has done in my life. I am thankful that while I have not attained some arbitrary level of perfection, I am growing. I’m learning hard lessons on my way. I am challenging myself and being challenged. I am loving being a rebel and breaking the mold by simply refusing to play the game everyone else is. (Those that know me in person know especially well how much I enjoy being rebellious in really weird ways. It’s why I don’t color my gray hair, why there is one ride at Disneyland which I have never ridden despite having gone hundreds of times, and why I refuse to spend more than $15 on a pair of jeans.)
If you’ve read thus far and thought, “This broad sure is a stuck up stick in the mud and shouldn’t tell us what to do.” I want to say a few things:
You don’t have to do anything I am doing. If I inspire some people to rethink how they spend their time, then all the better. But if that’s not for you, then please find what it is that makes you a more complete, whole, and cultured person and do that. I also am not judging anyone but myself here. (Okay with one exception, I never reposted those weird self-deprecation but also self aggrandizing memes that I talked about, I am totally judging that, because it shows a real lack of self-awareness.) But to my point, I was the one with the social media addiction. I was the one spending my time unwisely. I was the one falling into group-think. I was the one being lazy. I was the one putting off a good book for a bad scroll. I share these thoughts not to bash you, but to show here’s how far I fell into those traps, and how I made the change to get myself out.
My husband, one of my sisters, and good friends use social media. They are content to do so. They derive some measure of pleasure from it and find positive things to glean from it. I love those people, and I do not judge them. I don’t love you personally, because I don’t know you. I love you in that you are my neighbor, and I do not judge you— because I do not know you!
I do see the irony in using the internet to share these thoughts, but I do not expect anyone to read them should they choose not to, and frankly as I’m not reposting this on socials, I’m not sure anyone will find it, unless someone else chooses to share there. Our internet used to be big, but another frustration of social media is that it has become very small, and we only consume those things which are placed in our feeds. Ah, a topic for another day.
Instead of telling you to get off social media or dumb down your phone, I would love to encourage you to pick one area of life you want to better yourself in. Pick some small and attainable action items to get yourself toward that goal. Stick with it, run with it. And you just never know what the end result will be. For me? It was removing the distraction of social media so I could think my own thoughts. What it became? Progress on the path to becoming more cultured, bettering my mind, and my soul. A one woman revolution.
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