I’m Starting a Social Media Fast
My 20-year-old decided to erase all of his social media accounts. It took him days because he was determined to remove the tags that linked him to photos that other people (okay, mostly me) had posted.
I admired his commitment to his principles ("Facebook isn't going to make money on my data!"), his discipline (don't worry - he's still a typical 20-year-old, plugged into Netflix and listening to music), and his insights ("Mom, you know when you post a photo of Audrey, even though she doesn't have an account on Facebook yet, Facebook is still tracking it - she has a shadow account on there, you know?" Um...no, I did not know that).
I blissfully returned to my usual pattern. I like Facebook. I like Insta. I'm finally figuring out Twitter thanks for my renewed determination to be politically active. #NewToHashtags. I like scrolling through my newsfeed in these spots and catching up with people who are dear to me, with people who I want to know more deeply, with people who I see as ahead of me on journeys that matter to me. It's entertaining. It's connecting. It's enlightening (I've read some great, insightful, informative, paradigm-shifting articles and blogs because friends posted them). It's mind candy (those goofy memes and videos get me), and it's inspiring (who doesn't love a riveting video?).
Then, I watched The Daily Show's skit about Facebook and that was hard to ignore. Not super hard since it ran months ago.
Since I still think about that clip, I decided I want to take a hiatus from FB (#DelayedReaction).
"Couldn't I just move over to Instagram?" I whined to my son.
"Mom, Instagram IS Facebook! Facebook owns Instagram. Why do you think you can push your Insta posts to FB?"
Cripes.
Yeah, I knew that.
I'm not as decisive as my son. I'm keeping my accounts. I simply want to prototype (a la Designing Your Life!) my life without the big players. LinkedIn is an exception since I use it professionally so often (#rationalization), and my LinkedIn account pushes to Twitter, so anything I post there will show up on Twitter, but I'm not going to Twitter, FB, or Insta to read anymore. For a while anyway.
While I'm playing with this social media fast, I'm committing to posting more often here on my blog (not hard - it's woefully neglected!).
As my favorite self-care article of all time reminds me:
Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing. It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution. It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do...
And, yes, I did, in fact, just go to FB and find that quote. #Irony
I'd love for you to stay connected with me here on my blog. And the truth is, I don't go and read other people's blogs (*hangs head in despair*), so if you're in the same boat (who has TIME for that?!), here's Plan B: subscribe to my email list. I set up a separate list for people who want to receive a monthly email with links to the blogs I write here. Know that subscribing to that email list is a temporary thing. I'm wiping that list if/when I return to the big social media players, so if you want to be on my real email list in addition to my temporary, stay-in-touch-with-me, temporary deal, click here.