It’s been two years since I deleted all my social media. After reading multiple books about the intricacies of social media platform design and the harmful effects of these apps, I decided I needed to change my relationship with them.
Important to note, how I changed my “relationship” with social media. I didn’t just remove it completely, but I did change how I viewed my usage of social networks. Most people use social media to consume content and escape their reality as a form of entertainment. Entertainment can be seen as a good thing but not when the addictiveness of social media is always pulling you in to see the next best video.
My view is that there are two types of users. Consumers and creators, knowing the harmful effects of consumption I thought the only reason I would use social media is to create, and at the time I had no interest in creating content.
This made my decision very simple. I deleted everything at first, but slowly afterwards I introduced it back into my life and I still look at social media on the occasion two years later. This is not in an addictive way. Only when I am interested in what someone is doing I check the platforms. For the networking and messaging side of things I only use platforms like WhatsApp and Snapchat for logistical purposes to keep up with friends and organising time to go out.
Social media is a difficult world to navigate and so many people have different hacks to deal with it and stop addictions, but here is the simple truth. You must change your relationship with it. Just like any addiction, removing it from your life will eventually end in you picking it up again and falling into the trap. You are then right back where you started but changing your relationship with the addiction will last forever.
After changing my relationship with social media, I have increased productivity in my life 10-fold because I am not constantly checking my feeds. I can now sit down for long periods of time and do deep meaningful work. This is a hard path but sometimes in life, you must choose the path of most resistance to make changes to live a better life. You will have to work on this every day.
