I’ll be deactivating my social media account soon.
I’m not sure when I’ll return to it, but after taking a few breaks away from it this summer, doing some extensive reading and research about its impact on our data and everyday lives, consuming way too much negativity, whining, complaining, and oversharing throughout my newsfeed, and questioning my own contributions, motives, and behavior when using this powerful tool, I believe it’s a good time to step away from it for a while. And if you’re reading this, whether you’re a bachelorette or not, and this is something you’ve been thinking about doing too? I say go for it. It might do you some good.
My first experience with social media was with a platform called Myspace. I was in high school and looking back, I had no business being up there in the first place. I thank God smartphones weren’t a thing yet. Most of us former teens could only access this platform from a desktop computer or a laptop. At the time, I was an emotionally immature teenager who, like others using Myspace back then, barely knew who I was. I wanted to fit in, ranked my friendships by who made it to my top 8 list, and occasionally crept on guys pages I had crushes on… and messaged some of them -- I’m so sorry to the dudes I annoyed. My goofy yet bold teenage self just couldn’t take a hint. I wrote terrible poetry about my feelings up there too. Ugh. By the time college happened, I eventually ditched Myspace and graduated to Facebook. And life would never be quite the same. Anyone who’s on social media or has used it at some point knows that now more than ever, we’re all super-connected to so many people and we’re also consuming and sharing information like crazy. Especially since many of us all have smartphones now. So while being able to be connected has its pros, I’ve also found it has its cons too. Let’s see…
Oversharers. Yeah, you know who they are. The ones who disclose way too much information about themselves, their lives, their significant others, how much their kid pooped in one day, the boss they hate, and about how annoyed they are with the woman named Karen who’s taking too long at the self-checkout line. Some people will do just about any and everything for attention. They’ll post petty status updates. Take digs at other people. And manage to post a ton of selfies and videos and announcements about all the moves they’re making. There’s a name for people like this and it’s not very friendly. So I won’t write it. I’ll just say that it rhymes with “attention snores.”
The nonstop negativity. I really can’t fully understand why some people are just so rude and mean and negative these days. I’ve seen so many political, religious, racist, sexist, and hateful rants from different people who would likely never say some of the things they’ve posted online out loud. It blows my mind. Once you post something, it then becomes public information for the whole world to see. And the internet doesn’t forget.
The not-so-realistic highlight reels. No one’s life is really as good as it looks on social media. A lot of what you’re seeing isn’t real. I promise. Read that again. Even my hair in my profile picture isn’t all of my own real hair (I’m wearing some quality hair extensions I paid good money for.) I rarely even post my photos in real time. There have been times when I’ve snapped cool pictures, I looked great and seemed happy in, but was truthfully feeling bad about myself, discontented, and going through some challenging times. I just felt like I needed to post to keep up with what everyone else was doing even though I was feeling down. I later discovered there were handfuls of other people I knew doing this too. Is that a good or healthy way to live?
There have also been times when I’ve fallen short and slipped into some of the cons categories, but in recent years, my intentions have been to consistently use my social media platform to inspire, influence, and impact others through my writing and storytelling. And lately, I’ve been feeling like it’s time to pull back. Which is exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll still be maintaining Making Waves (you can subscribe to the blog above and receive email notifications when I have new posts up.) I can also be reached at simoheard@gmail.com. And I’ll still be writing for Thought Catalog, but I want to be a better me. And I know taking some time away from social media will be a nice start. Before I go, there are some great resources I highly recommend checking out. I hope they help and inform you as much as they’ve helped me. Please see the links below: