My Social Dilemma
We are all aware at some level of the adverse effects social media has on ourselves individually and as a whole. On a personal level, social media distracts us from our goals, causes us to waste time, and damages our self-esteem and individuality. However, many of us have unconsciously suspended this reality in a fog of cognitive dissonance. We constantly see people supposedly living more fulfilling lives than our own, feel demoralized when we do not see enough likes, and always feel the need to broadcast ourselves, inhibiting us from genuinely enjoying moments as they happen.
At a societal level, social media divides us into rigid thought groups, causes us to be more depressed, angry, even suicidal, and makes us hate “others.” Moreover, as Jonathan Haidt has shown, it has destroyed political discourse and most likely caused massive teenage mental illness and suicide spikes. Social media truly hit the mainstream when Instagram and Twitter converged onto smartphones around 2011. This was my freshman year of high school. Having always struggled to fit in, this new frontier of social dynamics certainly did not help.
Fast forward to 2021. Always recognizing the detriment of social media, I had deleted the apps from my phone many times in the past. Still, I always found myself returning to them on the internet browser or eventually caving and re-downloading them. But, then, the Pandemic hit, the lockdowns, the protests, and the riots, all with an election on the horizon. People who had never been interested in, let alone read books on politics, economics, or history, suddenly found themselves trapped inside with nothing to do but go on their phones and engage with a politically charged world. The Dunning-Kruger Effect spread faster than COVID-19.
People who got into politics just a few months ago started to post ad nauseam, and polarization grew exponentially. The posting was relentless, the arguments were vicious (and personal), the ignorance was stunning, and the self-awareness was nowhere to be found. I was constantly told that if I didn’t 100% buy into every aspect of some culture war dogmatism, I was a fascist or a communist. It became exhausting.
I Needed to Detox
By around August, my girlfriend and I looked at each other and realized we had simply had enough. Enough of the noise, the nonsense, the virtue-signaling, and the negativity. We made the jump. We didn’t just delete the apps. We deleted our profiles. No longer did we have Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. I kept Snapchat but deleted about 80 people off of it, only keeping my closest friends.
Almost a year later, and I can say the difference is night and day. My confidence, sense of who I am as a person, and general comfort in my own skin are the highest they have ever been — so is my productivity. In addition, my focus on my career has grown exponentially (I can’t imagine if I had done this in college). I still spend time on my phone, but now it is for far more productive reasons: reading articles, watching informative videos, exploring Google Earth, or some other form of learning. What I did not expect was how much more I would read. I always liked audiobooks when driving, landscaping, cleaning, or hiking, but I never really read physical books all that much. Since deleting social media, however, I read almost every day.
By spending my spare time off of social media and engaging in more subtle, relaxed forms of information absorption like books and podcasts, I have also noticed myself become vastly less political — or should I say — partisan. Without being swept up in the viral tribal trends of each day, I am allowed the breathing space to let the dust settle, learn the details, explore the nuance, hear from the other side and decide for myself.
More importantly, I live in the moment now. This may sound corny, but I mean this passionately. I no longer have an itch in the back of my mind to record and post what I am doing. Now, my experiences are my own, not everyone else’s. I am no longer taken out of them to open an app and take a picture — who needs Instagram stories when you have your own memories? It is hard to put this difference into words, but it has made all the difference in my quality of life.
All in all, I cannot recommend it more. But what do you think? Is deleting social media good for you? Vote Here
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— Team macrovo
