What Made Me Quit Every Social Media
I never was such a big fan of social media in general (well, except Twitter where I basically lived), however, I used some of them, mostly for practical reasons. This year I end up quitting every social media at once. Do you want to know why? Keep reading.
For years I’ve been resisting to the peer pressure of creating an Instagram account. My friends constantly telling me I should have an account, although for me it didn’t make sense, so I kept resisting. A few months back I end up giving up to the pressure. Worst decision I took. I mean, it could’ve been harmless, if I didn’t choose one of the moments I was more mentally debilitated. I started for the right reasons, the wish to keep the amazing friends I met during Erasmus closer, even with the distance. I tried the best I could to keep it as a clean social media, in the sense of exclusively add people I knew and had any kind of connection with. At the beginning seemed like a good idea, although it didn’t really work out.
One of the reasons I kept avoiding creating an account was actually a pretty basic one, the fact that I barely take pictures. Which actually changed a lot after my Erasmus experience. Not that I took that much pictures of myself, but definitely way more than usual. Also, I end up getting addicted to taking pictures of every different place and every different meal I took in order to remember it in the future. Even now, only a few months later, I love to see all the pictures and remember every joyful moment I spent; some years forward it will be even more valuable and special to have these pictures. Life keeps changing, but having pictures of certain moments is an everlasting reminder of who we were, what we experienced, the people that passed in our life that will ever remain the same. It doesn’t matter where life takes you, that memories stay still and strong. But getting to the point, if I didn’t take pictures of myself, it wouldn’t make sense to have an account at all. Even when I started taking more pictures, most of them was food so, what’s the point of creating an account and share food? Every picture I took was for myself, to remember the moments in the future, not to show to the world.
The other reason, which is in fact the most important, is that I always saw Instagram as a fake social media, even more than Facebook, that I didn’t want to take part in. Fake in the sense that people exclusively share the happy part of their life, creating such a happy unreal environment that is not always easy to cope with. One of the examples that show clearly what I mean is the fitness accounts; always sharing positive content, pictures with amazing unreal bodies, showing their exercise routine, all healthy meals. Basically, most of the influencers actually contribute to maintaining this unreal environment going. If we scroll on Instagram, we can easily spot that most of the content displayed is feeding this kind of environment. Anyway, who would want to know when you are in a bad moment of your life, crying yourself to sleep? In fact, often people condemn the ones that share their vulnerabilities on social media, like if it wasn’t a completely normal part of the human being? The main problem of this happy unreal world of Instagram is the unconscious comparison. Even without knowing, we end up comparing ourselves to others, to the life they share on social media, everything they accomplished. If you are at a healthy state of mind and you are conscious enough to distinguish social of real life, it’s fine; the problem starts when you’re not. When your vulnerable, social media can be one of the triggers to deteriorate even more your mental health. Social media can be your best friend, allowing you to keep in touch with all of your friends all around the world, but can also be your worst enemy, if you let it.
This year was particularly challenging for all of us with this pandemic situation that is still not even close to coming to an end. For me, adding to that, it was also the year I graduated. Which mean, the year I had to write a whole thesis of my own. Adding the pandemic adverse effects to the whole process until graduation, I must confess that it was a particularly difficult moment of my life. Since I was in a vulnerable state, I should’ve known that creating an Instagram account wasn’t a good idea. Anyway, I gave it a try. A pretty quick one, not even lasted one month.
Adding to Instagram, I end up giving a break to all other social media. Facebook was the easiest one, I exclusively used it to communicate with my friends and to access the content related to the university. Now that I was almost graduating, it was the perfect timing to put an end to it. I also quit Twitter, the only social media that I genuinely enjoyed. I was experiencing such a level of pressure, that Twitter was also consuming me instead of reliving me as usual. Instead of a safe place, become another source of anxiety. At that point, I wanted so hard to block myself from the world, block my thoughts, that even WhatsApp was a problem. Quitting every social media end up to be an unavoidable step to take. The moment I did it I felt an instant relieve. Not that suddenly I was fine, but sure it was an essential step towards improving my mental state.
My advice: set boundaries. When you feel you can’t cope with social media, give it brake, take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, who will? You are the most precious thing in your life, even when you can’t see it.
