Just over a year ago I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts and embarked on a social media-free life. The decision to do so was one I shared in my post, Why I Left Facebook and Instagram. At that time, I knew I’d made the right decision, but I feared how the choice would play out over time. When pianist/author friend Laura Dean reached out to me a few weeks ago, told me she was considering doing the same thing, and asked me how I navigated my departure, I knew it was time to write about how my year away from these platforms affected me and this blog.
First some background information: bloggers, writers, and musicians are told that in order to build careers, we must have a social media presence. I myself stated this in several past posts. When I wrote that, however, I hadn’t considered the cost in time and peace of mind. Sure, I got more traffic to No Dead Guys, but it was at the cost of feeling overwhelmed by others’ anger, politics, and endless need for attention. Even when I limited the amount of time I spent scrolling through my news feed (usually in a vain search for other people’s vacation and pet photos), I went away from the platforms feeling as if I’d escaped a crowded marketplace of people who were all shouting, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” I hated what that world was doing to friendships. I hated feeling as if I was contributing to the noise every time I posted something.
When I made the decision last year to leave social media I posted notes on my feeds letting people know that they could contact me through my website and I let my posts stay up for several days before I closed everything down. That’s it. I didn’t return to either site, which was good because—as Laura Dean discovered when she attempted to close her own accounts—both platforms automatically re-activate any account slated for deletion if logged into up to two weeks after you try to leave.
The first thing I noticed was how quiet everything seemed. I suddenly had a lot more time—time that had been spent scrolling through posts simply because it was an easy way to fill spare minutes. The second thing I noticed was how quickly the real world rushed in. I noticed people and things around me. I enjoyed scenery for the sake of enjoying it, not with any plan to create the perfect post-able photo. The third thing I noticed was that I began to get my privacy back. My personal life (even carefully curated) is no longer on display, and being away from that electronic fishbowl has made me realize how much I value anonymity.
One of the best things about having ditched social media is that I’m reading more deeply and have stopped thinking in soundbites. I look at life from a broader, more settled perspective. Without the pressure of needing to create pithy one-liners or clever hash tags (something I never excelled at anyway), I no longer feel the pressure to be clever, young, beautiful, successful, and whatever else the attention economy tells us is vitally important. I can live outside the glare of other people’s expectations. And—true story!—because I wasn’t inundated with everyone else’s political rhetoric, I was even able to get through the latest contentious US election cycle without being angry all the time.
One of my biggest fears—that people wouldn’t be able to contact me—was unfounded. I didn’t disappear from cyberspace, just from Facebook and Instagram. Anyone who “googled” my name found me easily, and I’ve been gratified that so many reached out to me through No Dead Guys, especially after my Mom died last summer.
Of course not everything about leaving Facebook and Instagram has been positive. No Dead Guys did experience a dip in readership (although it’s slowly coming back up to where it was as my Google rankings improve). I miss some of the people I used to communicate with on both platforms. Sure, my close friends stay in touch, but I’ve lost contact with many tangential people I enjoyed following. Other than these two things, however, this transition has been completely positive.
I’m not an evangelist on a mission to convince everyone to leave social media. There are many who find it one of the best ways to promote their businesses and to stay in touch with people. But for those who have found that the quality of their lives and their relationships with in-person loved ones has suffered, I encourage you to just pull the plug on whatever platform you’re currently chained to and come back to real life. Everything and everyone who’s truly important in your life will still be there, along with all the beautiful and messy details of real life that we miss when we’re trapped in a virtual reality.