The Serenity of Zero Social Media

I'm coming up on the two year anniversary of deleting my last social media account – Facebook, which also nuked my Instagram account that I never actually used. I don't remember the exact date, but it was in May. I was going through absolute hell. We were renting a condo in a private community with a beautiful view, but neighbors who treated us poorly because were “just renters”. We were trying to save enough money to get a downpayment on a home, but COVID and other complications made it so we were only about halfway to our goal.

Then one of the owners decided she wanted to live there after her and her husband separated during COVID. Rent prices were sky high, I'd just found out my estranged dad died after a six year battle with Alzheimer's and not a single member of my immediate or extended family reached out to me. It was extremely stressful, and social media algorithms were digging into the worst part of me and keeping me in a nonstop stress cycle.

I knew something had to give. I'd already been spinning down my social media accounts. Google Plus, where I'd been a very active public personality was long gone by then. I'd deleted my Twitter account after getting attacked for helping a friend who had been brutally abused by her husband. I'd turned off all notifications, taken the app off my phone, reduced the number of friends I had down to about a hundred, used a number of browser extensions to wipe out unwanted content... but that wasn't enough.

The algorithm still found ways to consistently show me things I couldn't resist responding to with anger and outrage. I was living in painful hardcore stress 24/7 and at least some of it was self-inflicted because I'd bought into the idea that social media helped me socialize with friends who had become my support network. It's helpful! I have friends in niche places! I can't leave my friends behind!

Then one day, I flamed out in a way I knew was going to send me to my third stint in Facebook Jail. In a thread about domestic abuse, I uttered the words, “Men are trash.”, a phrase anyone who knows anything about Facebook moderation knows will send you straight to the jail because Facebook treats men as a protected group. I caught a 30-day ban for groups, and a 3-day ban from anything else. I realized I'd done that on purpose. I wanted out, but I didn't know how to leave... so after the ban came up, I said my goodbyes and left.

I gave my so-called friends information on how to keep in touch with me. Messaging apps, my email address, and a private Discord server I've since deleted. Only a handful of people actually did this... and by then I'd pared my list of friends down to people I'd actually interacted with in the real world, so it's not like these were just faceless internet users.

It was hard for me to not take that personally and be constantly bitter about it... but, through time and healing I've come to forgive them because it's not their fault. Humans are biologically hardwired to want to be liked, and social media relentlessly and unethically exploits those instincts. That validation treadmill keeps them scrolling and occupied, leaving them time for little outside the bubble world created by social media.

At first, it felt lonely and I often had a deep fear that I was missing something. Drama happened. Activism happened. I missed all of it. I longed to be back, but every time I got weak I just thought about that last interaction I'd had, about “Men Are Trash”, and I can't go back. I just can't. About a year in, that longing disappeared. About a year and half in, I could feel the hold of needing validation let go. Two years in, I feel more free than I can remember. I love it.

Life is still stressful. We made it out of all the bad crap two years ago just barely. We managed to swing buying a home, but we had $56 in all our bank accounts for a month. I got a little bit of closure with my dad, though there will always be the sting of not getting to say goodbye. I'm winging it on the whole mourning thing... but what I'm saying is that we got through the rough time and into other rough times and past those and so on... and while there has been stress and there has been struggle, there hasn't been so much that I feel I can't handle it.

The friends who didn't bail on me were some of my best friends as it was and our relationships just got better. I have more time to create things and take care of things and experience the world, and that's precious. Life is never perfect, and we live in harsh times, but I've finally gotten a wish I've had since I was a teenager... a voice in my head disappeared... the one that said...

“What will other people think?”

...about literally everything I did or said. I've been on vacations and to shows and gone on walks and experienced both every day and extraordinary things without feeling like I need to bottle that experience up and share it with the world to gain approval. I'll be honest... I feel like I'm getting away with something. In a world where social media is becoming mandatory, I've stolen back feelings and emotions I don't have to share with anyone at all except the people with me.

I can't wait to see what three years brings.

Don't believe me! Always fact-check everything you read on the internet through multiple sources. Here's a list to help.