November 26, 2020

Quitting Social Media

It might seem like 2020 is not the year that you decide to quit social media. After all, social media seems to be one of the only ways to stay in contact with people at these times. But this was exactly the time when I realized that social media did not really do anything to me anymore.

I used to be one of the early adopters for most of the social media platforms. I used to be super active on Facebook during my teen years (over 10 years ago) and lately on Instagram and Snapchat. But when the quarantines hit my home country and everybody entrenched in their homes, I realized that I automatically stopped using all the social media platforms.

I don't have anything to say on social media, because I don't do anything worth mentioning. I have never shared anything particularly private on social media and now that I am staying at home, everything I do is quite private and I do not feel the need to share it.

I'm not too curious about other people's life either, so I don't feel the need to spy on people through social media. So I took the step. I quit social media. I took back my time and attention.

I didn't do it in one day though. I first deleted Snapchat in the springtime. Just to test how it feels to not be so connected all the time. Snapchat used to be my most used social media platform, so it was a good test.

Quitting Snapchat did not feel bad at all, so I continued with Facebook. I only used Facebook to contact my relatives and old school mates. On Facebook I only shared big changes in my life, like new jobs and school and when I moved to a new city. I never used it daily, so it did not feel too bad either.

Next up was Twitter during the summer. I used it to stay up to date about the latest updates and gossip related to my career. Twitter had a bigger impact on my everyday life because I used to spend so much time on it every day. The good part about Twitter is that you can check the status updates even without an account so in reality, I do not miss anything. If Hacker News or some newsletter has a conversation about some Twitter post, I can check it out.

The next step was the hardest... Quitting Instagram... I could easily spend 2-3 hours per day on Instagram. That is a big part of one's life. This step took a long time for me to do. I spent almost 2 months considering it, but two weeks ago I did it. I no longer have an Instagram account, instead, I have 2 more hours in my life every day. It feels good!

There was one more account left though. And it was a hard decision to delete it. I'm talking about LinkedIn. As a software developer, LinkedIn is one of the main platforms to search for work and maintain a professional network. Now, I did not even use LinkedIn that actively, but taking back my time and attention was not the only reason to quit social media. I also wanted to improve my privacy online. Having a LinkedIn profile with your full name, education, work history and a summary is not exactly good for your privacy...

How Does It Feel?

I went from being connected daily to ~2000 people to being connected to 3-5 people. And it feels good. I feel freedom. I am not daily bombarded by other people's lives and opinions. I don't feel the need to share some highlight about my life every day.

I get so much more done every day because social media is not taking my time and attention. I do more of the things that I really enjoy because I don't constantly think about other's opinions. I did not even realize how much other people's opinions affected my life before I quit social media.

Now it was not easy to quit the habit of checking social media constantly. Deleting Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn did not really affect me, but I had actually developed a muscle memory to open Instagram when I open my phone :D It took maybe 3-5 days to learn out of it, but now I don't even check my phone anymore. I went from having 6-8 hours of daily screen time during the start of the year to having 30-50 minutes of screen time now. I only use my phone now when I call or text someone, meditate (I use Headspace) or when I travel with bus or train (for the ticket).

I got a little FOMO in during the first days of no social media, but now I don't even remember how it felt to check it constantly (I get used to new things quickly though).

How Did It Change Me?

Something weird happened. I have not felt bored since I quit social media. I used to check Instagram or Twitter when I felt bored, which was often. I honestly have not once felt bored after quitting social media. It is weird. My mind is constantly creating thoughts and ideas and I am constantly doing new things.

I have always read and meditated, but now I replaced that social media time with even more reading and meditation. That might have a lot to do with the constant ideas and not feeling bored. I have been reading about one book a week and meditating daily now.

I also finished my thesis. Changed this website from Gatsby to Next.js. I even started learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails and now I'm doing a side project with it.

As I said earlier, I now do much more of the things that I actually like instead of subconsciously trying to impress others. It feels good. I feel much more at peace with myself.

About Privacy

I mentioned that I quit LinkedIn because of privacy concerns. I do this kind of a privacy checkup about yearly. During that, I check my current situation with basic stuff like passwords, security breaches, old accounts that I should delete etc. Every year I try to improve my privacy and security. It started with multifactor authentication everywhere in 2017, then I found VPN's and TOR in 2018... Now in 2020, this privacy improvement was one more reason to quit social media.

I had not really thought about how big of a threat social media is to your privacy if you are not careful. I had way too much information about my "real life" out there that it would have been really easy for someone to impersonate me or otherwise cause harm to me.

This was one more reason that 2020 is the year to think about your social media habits and your life online. We live more online now than we have ever lived and it is extremely important that you are not risking your privacy and security there.

Closing Words

I know that quitting social media is a bit extreme for most people, but I do recommend for everybody to take a break from social media and try to spend more time in the real world and with the people that are actually close to you. Take a week away from social media, instead text or call to your friends, pick up a book, start a passion project, learn a new skill. You won't regret it.

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