not out of the woods just yet
leaving social media was mostly an experiment. i asked myself, "would quitting lead to my art improving?" and as the conclusion begins to arrive (seems to be a yes, by the way!), i find the devil whispering in my ear again... "would going back be so bad?". so i'm making this page as sort of a vow renewal. i've only socially quit for four months (since february 2, 2025) and in reality, like three weeks, more on that later, but i'd like to log all the things social media: what helped with leaving, the effects, yadda yadda, we'll see what comes out of this lil thing
i interchange 'quitting' and 'leaving' but i don't think i can consider myself as someone who quit just yet, but hopefully this leave will be permanent
social media is a young man's game
even though this isn't true at all, social media is mostly associated with younger folks. or at least i still have that association in mind, thanks to a childhood of unrestricted internet access. that train of thought has turned into "i'm too old for social media" and i'm the youngest person who will ever walk this earth? it also helped that i considered the future. if the thought of me in 5 years still using social media makes me unhappy, why should i use it now?
it's for this reason i feel bad for people on the older side who are just now acclimating to phones and apps. social media is still new and surprising to them. i remember a tweet saying something like, "it's difficult to be on social media as someone who has a memory", referring to how viral posts will get reposted and become viral all over again, with different people having the same reactions. some of it is funny. but is that worth it? the "social media is a casino" metaphor was a helpful perspective for me. is the potential of 'winning big', AKA seeing a funny or whatever post, worth the rest of the slop you have to go through? the post you found beautiful or meaningful or hilarious isn't an experience exclusive to social media. read a book, take a virtual tour of a museum, or something, anything but this
quitting is a process
to make up for the amount of jadedness in that last paragraph i'll go over what helped in leaving
one is thinking about what i value. time and peace of mind are important to me. i think peace of mind is what helped out here, since social media can be so mentally invasive. i was bothered by how i'd think about things and people only relevant online. while they existed on the outskirts of my life, they weren't really part of it. connectivity and information is great and that's why i'm still on here, but it can't, and shouldn't, replace what is actually and can be in your life. even though staying meant a chance that that mutual could be my best friend-forever-and-ever or i'll find the niche topic i'm passionate about and will make me millions, it brings the casino metaphor again. is staying for the low, low chance of those things happening worth it? i keep asking that for mostly my sake, so maybe you'll have a different answer (and different odds), but it wasn't, for me
the next was already said in the beginning. what was something i thought was important and i wanted to spend more time doing? for me, it was art, ha-ha-ha. i think this is pretty self-explanatory so i'll leave it at that
the final thing was not thinking in black and white when it came to quitting. i would have days where i'd log in just to see 'what i've been missing.' it felt like a step back but it was necessary in the long run. every time, i would be reminded of why i left. this was what i used to look forward to? this is what i would spend my time doing? to make myself clear, it's not entirely "social media bad"- it's more like "i'm happy i can spend my time doing what i love and being with people i love." maybe you've spent the entire time thinking 'OK who cares i love the scroll' and that's fine. if you're happy, i'm happy elsewhere, for extraneous reasons
what i do nowadays
i'll keep this short
- i keep a journal in case i have thoughts that are really bothering me
- reddit is honestly the goat. at this point i think it's the only place that lets you view posts without an account. i use it as a replacement for google kind of. it's also great because everything after the top rated posts suck which kills any motivation to scroll
- i still watch youtube but same case as reddit: few greats then the rest is bad. i don't have the app so when i start watching shorts, it just breaks after a while (please DO NOT tell youtube this they may fix it)
- walking
- if i'm really, really bored or need to look busy i'll 'scroll' through public discord servers i'm in, but only channels that are infrequently used, like the art or news channel. this is something i'm working on though
- having a new site to afk on. going on social media is a habit so i made my 'default, go-to' site/app focumon, which i associate with time management and can't do much on anyways
as for the effects, it's too soon to tell, but by month 3 i think i'll start levitating and maybe by month 4 i'll be able to write these 'posts' in 3 seconds and by a year i'll be exclusively taking cold showers. but those are just my hopeful predictions
i thought about using memes to accentuate my point but i realized that it would probably detract from it