Hi!
Well friends, by now you’ve probably heard about — and likely experienced — the Instagram, Facebook and What’s App outage earlier this week. That, along with the (albeit unsurprising) Congressional testimony by the Facebook whistleblower, has social media on my mind. If you’re new here, “Friday Things” are posts that are usually more stream of consciousness and deeper dives into feelings and all that, and what I launched The Yay Club with. We haven’t had one in a while, so dusting off the franchise for this week.
Anyways, social media!
I am that many years old that I remember not only when Instagram came on the scene, but also when Facebook did. I was a freshman in college, and it was a welcome replacement to the creepiness of MySpace. (Tom, anyone?) I spent the beginning of my career working on social media strategy, advising federal government clients on how to best use social media to support their communications goals, and I was also a semi-successful healthy living blogger for a few years (the blog is long retired, so don’t bother Googling. 🙃) In other words, I have always been all in on social media. I saw it as a tool and an asset and just something… fun. Low stakes!
In the last couple years, though, I’ve started to change my tune. Call it getting older, but I don’t know — I’ve started to feel a little bit uncomfortable about even having a social media presence. Extra wary about the what, why and how, and even more mindful of my privacy. It’s sort of ironic, and the complete antithesis to what I used to do and say as a consultant back in the early days of social media, but since those early days, the environment has changed… A LOT.
With all that in mind, last year, I made the decision to deactivate my Facebook account. I had been checking Facebook less and less in the last year or two by then, mainly using it to access groups related to podcasts I was a fan of or writing groups I was a member of, and had long begun to feel disenchanted by the political content and overall derision the platform seemed to spark. It has come a heck of a long way from the carefree space for dumping albums of photos after parties in college. And something about seeing the posts about my mom shared by other people after she passed away took me over the edge; I became even more interested in formally removing myself from the platform and everything it seemed to promote.
So, first I deleted my mom’s account, and then immediately deactivated mine.
I have not missed Facebook one bit since then.
But Instagram… that’s been a different experience for me. I’ve always enjoyed it, which feels sort of embarrassing to admit for some reason — like it’s a guilty pleasure or something. In the last 18 or so months, it’s also became a part of my suite of pandemic coping mechanisms, for better or worse. During the height of the pandemic, I went there to feel less alone, and also to feel inspired/encouraged/distracted/connected… all of those things. And my screen time on my phone? Oooof.
At a certain point in the last year, though, I started to realize that it was probably not good to have my head buried in an app so much — even if it was because I was lonely and missing seeing my friends (or really ANYONE) in person. It felt like Instagram had become a bad habit I couldn’t break, as well as a black hole sucking up my time. I was automatically opening the app and scrolling, barely even reading, and without any particular goal — just this continuous cycle every day. It wasn’t as interesting or fun as much as it was just a compulsion. Time would just sort of fly as I scrolled, and I’d often realize I’d been scrolling for far longer than I originally intended. And I started to feel sort of…. gross about it. I mean, I feel like I know better than most people how precious time is, and yet there I was, just letting the minutes tick past as I stared into other people’s lives (and really, their highlight reels). Why? What for?
And while I didn’t necessarily feel like checking it regularly was doing anything awful to me, per say, I sort of started to worry about the future of my brain, and my eyesight. Random right? I’m sure if you ask most people, or if you listened to that Facebook whistleblower’s testimony, the main negative you’d hear associated with Instagram is mental health concerns related to unhealthy comparison, and everything that comes along on the comparison trap party bus — low self-esteem, bullying, unhappiness, lack of confidence, jealously, FOMO, etc. I mean, there’s a lot! But for me, my concern became about the harm so much screen-time physically has on a person.
And so, I started deleting my Instagram app.
It seemed like the only way to break my attachment. At first it was haphazardly, for a day or so in the middle of the week, or during difficult holidays while I was still grieving (like Mother’s Day, for example). And then, lately, I’ve taken to dropping off for whole weekends. I’ll delete the app on Thursday nights or early on Fridays, and often don’t add it back to my phone til late Monday or Tuesday. In fact, I didn’t even realize Instagram was offline this Monday til I saw news alert about in mid-day, because I hadn’t downloaded it back onto my phone yet.
I’ve also just overall tried to avoid checking Instagram as regularly, and not opening the app in the mornings. I’ve come to realize that once I open Instagram during the day, it’s hard to avoid checking in again and again…. sort of like Pringles (once you pop, you can’t stop); so much easier to either not start at all, or have the app completely gone from my phone.
While I started this new routine (or whatever you want to call it) for specific physical health reasons, I can tell you without a doubt that mental health wise, I feel better. I mean, I didn’t even realize I’d felt bad to begin with, but there has been a clear difference. Not having Instagram handy is almost a relief sometimes — I don’t miss it when it’s not on my phone. I've also noticed that I feel more content not having it as a part of my day. Is this directly associated with not being able to actively or even subconsciously compare my life against someone else’s at all hours of the day? Oh, I’m sure. Without a doubt.
There are plenty of news reports and studies out there that admit that social media had led to unhappiness, and can increase depression and loneliness… going back years. I won’t deluge you with it, but personally, I find it concerning, especially for kids and teenagers.
All that to say, I think social media and our relationships with it are nothing short of messy.
There’s certainly a lot of good that can (even now) be found across social media — pockets of inspiration and (real) education and authentic connection + community, but — and maybe overwhelmingly so — there’s a lot of negativity and misinformation and role playing. It’s dangerous, and a lot of people are seemingly playing pretend, whether that’s through a curated lifestyle or leaning all the way in on conversations and belief systems that are literally just a giant echo chamber. The almighty algorithms are going to continue to serve you up content that feeds into what you already think or believe or have surrounded yourself with, and then extend those interest out a bit til you’re perhaps quite far from where you started, without you realizing you’d ever moved at all (for example: following healthy cooking accounts —> influencers/content that encourage excessive dieting and disordered behaviors). {The Daily had a great podcast episode about this too, from Wednesday, Oct. 6.}
I don’t really have a bow to cleanly wrap this up, or necessarily even a distinct point — I just find our social media use and the way it has evolved as infinitely interesting. I’m definitely not suggesting everyone quits social media, either. I do think, though, that if the outage on Monday was alarming to you, or heavily disrupted your day, or on the other side of the coin, left you feeling more productive or relaxed, you may want to sit down and think about why. (And hey, maybe even join me in social media free weekends!)
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I hope you have a great {offline!} weekend, and thank you for reading. I’d love to hear how you feel about social media and how your relationship with it has shifted or evolved… you can let me know in the comments, or send me a note via email!
Sending you all the YAYs,
Joelle
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