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An End to Social Media

I honestly can’t remember how long it’s been since I decided one day to never post on or even open my social media apps again. It was definitely a pre-pandemic impulse. I can only imagine how much worse my mental health would have been at that time if I had remained on Facebook and Instagram. I really lucked out with my random timing because I don’t think I would’ve had the willpower to take that plunge during lockdown. I’m just going to estimate that it’s been around 3 years now since I’ve been a part of that online hellscape.

Right away I noticed more space open up in my day as well as in my head. There was no more mindless scrolling for hours or trying to mentally curate the perfect status update. I also didn’t feel the need to look perfect for even the most mundane events so that I could take tons of photos for strangers. I knew from the beginning that it would be more isolating to not have an active Facebook presence, but the pros far outweighed the cons for me.

Fast forward to now and I’ve started to feel that familiar itch for validation. Part of me does miss showing myself off and feeling important. Sometimes I miss knowing how people I went to school with are doing and always having an endless supply of people to message and get attention from if I’m feeling lonely. There have been a couple times I’ve considered trying to go back, if even in a much more limited capacity.

I had to remind myself of all the reasons I left in the first place and ask the tough questions about what I was really missing. The thought had occurred to me a few times for finding a way to have Instagram without all the other people. That might sound strange, but hear me out. I really loved posting on Instagram. It was my favorite when it first came out. I’ve always enjoyed photography, but even more than that, I enjoyed looking back at my own photos. It was my own personal little scrapbook of my life. I still look through my old feed sometimes to find a specific picture I want to show someone. It always fills me with such tender feelings of nostalgia.

At the same time, Instagram may have even been more toxic to me than Facebook. I followed so many beautiful, skinny, perfect women. It was one of my guilty pleasures to just gorge myself on these flawless images every day for hours. At first it really felt inspiring and motivating. That didn’t last long though. It quickly devolved into yet another way for me to feel like I could never be good enough. I would never look like those girls behind the screen. No matter how hard I tried. I truly believe (and many studies suggest I’m accurate in this belief) that those images on Instagram as well as Tumblr contributed greatly to my disordered eating and unhealthy relationship with exercise and my body in general. I was always a little messed up in that regard, but social media sent me over the edge.

While things are still not perfect, I feel more mentally healthy without these influences in my life. I feel like I have more time to form genuine connections with the people that truly matter to me. I don’t feel distracted by all of these shallow, phony imitations of community. Now for the first time in my life, I have been actively working to create a real community for myself. I even found a solution for the things I was missing about social media.

Having Apple products, I am constantly being bombarded with iCloud pop-ups trying to get me to pay for more storage. While it is endlessly infuriating, it has led me to realize just how stupid these paid cloud storage spaces are. Why should I pay to store this in one place when there are literally thousands of free platforms that offer unlimited free storage to every user? Instagram doesn’t ask you to pay to save all your posts from the last ten years. Facebook doesn’t have a limit of things you can upload or share. Even this blog affords me unending space to post or upload as many files as I see fit.

I mentioned earlier my longing to have a private Instagram vacuum. I don’t want to get sucked into looking at anyone else’s feed, nor do I want to become obsessed with a public image and getting likes. Some people have told me their camera roll is like that for them. But as I don’t have unlimited backup storage, I don’t feel safe relying on something that could ultimately become lost. (It wouldn’t be the first time.) Plus there isn’t really a way to organize photos on there in any kind of meaningful way.

A few months ago I had the brilliant idea of using my other blog that I never actually post on. Having a private blog is the perfect way to keep a little digital diary with photos, journal entries, or literally anything you might want to share on social media. So I switched the blog to private and make sure that I also set every post to private before publishing. Now I have a lovely little collection of moments from this past year just for me! I still get to take cute photos, edit and arrange them, but I don’t have to worry about tags or likes or who is going to see them. I can even add little excerpts about what that day was like or how my life was going during the moments these photos were taken. Uncensored, raw, and real. Memories stored forever, for free, for just me.

I would highly recommend this method for anyone who may be tempted to immerse back into the dark waters of these online spaces. It could also be an excellent substitute for people that want to extricate themselves from social media, but feel unable to do so. It has definitely scratched that social media itch for me. Even if you don’t want to stop getting on Facebook, another important takeaway is: The internet is the cloud. The internet is free, unlimited storage. Don’t pay for that shit. Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Have any of you tried this method already for yourselves? Do you have any experience trying to get off of social media? What has it been like for you? Do you think my solutions would be helpful in your situation? I would love to hear about any tips or tricks other people might have. Hope everyone is staying mentally healthy out there. Whether you ditch the apps or not, always know that you are worthy, you are beautiful, and you are enough exactly as you are.

Missing Social Media

It has been over a year now since I stopped using most of social media. I still have a Tumblr, but I don’t really know anyone on there or interact much. I just post my drawings for my handful of followers and scroll through pretty pictures mostly. I also somewhat consider my time of here “social media” because I do get that dopamine rush from seeing likes and comments on my posts. But I’ve completed cut myself off from Facebook and Instagram. I never had a Twitter or anything else.

It was a lot easier to stop using these sites than I thought it would be. I don’t have tons of friends or family that talk to me on there anyway. It was a wonderful relief to not have to think about what was going on in that virtual social landscape all the time. However, if I’m being honest, I miss having the opportunity for attention. Dying my hair really got me craving some virtual validation. It would have felt nice to post some pictures of my new hair online and get lots of likes. There is something so satisfying about that.

As a woman, I also miss always being able to get attention from guys online. There are certain days when I feel so lonely. It was nice to know I could always find someone new to talk to even if I ultimately decided not to. I do recall thought that most of those impulsive introductions led to nothing but frustration and disappointment. There was also a good bit of anxiety when I decided I wanted to disappear but felt guilty about ghosting.

I know that overall, my life is better without social media. It is unnecessary and mentally and emotionally unhealthy. It’s just a distraction that inflates my ego. I have to keep reminding myself why I left in the first place. I don’t want to go back to fishing for validation from strangers. Even my writing on here has become a little too much about what people will think of it. I want to write these posts every day for me, regardless of what anyone else thinks about what I have to say.

Social Media is a misdirection. It convinces us that the happiness we seek lies elsewhere, in the approval and attention of others. We become addicted to being constantly acknowledged. We become a pseudo celebrity in our own minds. We start to feel empty without the gaze of the masses constantly upon us. But we don’t need anyone else to see our lives for them to matter. We don’t need anyone else to have happiness.

When I am feeling this hollowness, this sense of emptiness within me, there is still that urge to look outside of myself for something to fill that space. But the answer isn’t to indulge that urge. The answer is to sit with this empty feeling, not to run from it. It is a part of me, a part of this experience we call life. And I am the only one who has the power to fill that void. I already have everything that I need.

Thinspo

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Since I was probably 16 or 17 years old, I have been obsessively smothering myself with images of perfect, thin women. In the beginning I was really having fun. I had no idea this was something anyone else did or that it could be harmful to me. I would scroll through the skinny tag on Tumblr or Instagram to get me motivated before running on the treadmill every morning. I thought it was harmless. I thought it would help me even.

Fast forward to today and I still have Tumblr filled with skinny women to scroll through nearly 10 years later. I try not to actively seek out these photos anymore. I’ve cut out Instagram entirely. But still… I don’t make any real effort to avoid these images. I still get a sick satisfaction out of looking at obscenely skinny young women. I still compare my reflection to them each time I glance in a mirror.

The only difference is that I can see now that I will absolutely NEVER be able to look like the women in those pictures. Even if I starved myself until I was on death’s door, I would not look like them. It is still hard for me to accept. My body is just structurally different in too many ways. My ribcage is too big. My boobs are too small. My hips are too narrow. My chest is too broad. Things that frankly I’ve realized stand out in even starker contrast when I am at a very low weight. My body looks better when I am actually healthy. When I allow it to hold onto the fat it needs to function and support me.

I tell myself that I accept this. But deep down I still can’t. My eyes still fall enviously on all those online images. I need to start actively filling my feed with other things. I’d rather be looking at cute kawaii drawings, inspirational messages, beautiful homes, and snapshots of nature. At the very least I could follow some beautiful, average sized influencers. One of my favorite healthy inspirations is Autumn Brianne. She started a YouTube channel originally focused on eating disorder recovery. Now she focuses on more esoteric, spiritual topics, which I also love.

She is an incredibly beautiful woman. Perhaps even more so now that she has allowed her body to be happy and healthy rather than starving and stick-thin. Just watching her videos is a great comfort to me. She seems truly happy, truly loving towards her body. I aspire to be more like her one day. To love myself for what I am, rather than criticize and punish myself for what I am not.

However, there is a small voice inside me that keeps holding me back. It is the voice of my fear, of my ego. It tells me I’m disgusting, that I’ll only be more repulsive if I allow myself to put on any weight. But I know I have to keep moving forward despite that insidious voice. I genuinely don’t have a clear concept of what my appearance is anyway. I probably have body dysmorphia to some degree. My main goal is to stop focusing on appearance all together. What I look like doesn’t even matter! What matters is how I feel. What it’s like to live my life from day to day. How I treat myself and my loved ones.

I have been walking this addictive road for 10 years now. It is going to be extremely hard to start down a new path and break out of the deep grooves I’ve made. But it will be worth it. I hope that this serves as a warning to anyone just starting down that same path. Merely looking at pictures. It seems so harmless. It seems even positive at first. Thinsporation! A way to light that fire within. Giving yourself a goal to look forward to, to motivate you. But you’ll soon find yourself warped, tormented by an impossible ideal. No progress will ever be enough. And the happiness you started out to find will become muddled and lost along the way.

I would like to say that we are all beautiful just as we are. But even that, I feel, is missing the point. I’ll say instead that beauty isn’t everything. There is so much more to life than appearances. Make sure you don’t allow yourself to become so obsessed with the surface that you forget to look deeper. Make a list of what really matters in this life. I assure you, how you look won’t be on it. Let that list be an anchor when you start to feel adrift.

I start focusing on the wrong things. And then the wrong things become everything.
The Front Bottoms – Help