“You will cherish the joy of reeling in the fish far more than you will cherish the joy of knowing its picture was well-liked.”
Surprise is the most prevalent response I receive when I tell people that I don’t use social media. I don’t oppose social media, deny its significance in respect to the millennial zeitgeist, refute its marketing implications or claim that its existence is wholly negative. During a recent period of re-evaluating my goals and my process for reaching them, I couldn’t help but question social media’s presence in my process.
Time is our most valuable resource. A day’s architecture is built to support the hours and minutes it will take to see endeavors (homework, fitness, meditation, daily minutiae, etc.) through. Despite being fully aware that the clock is indifferently ticking, all too often I have found myself swiping up and down and through social media feeds. Five minutes here and 10 minutes there seems acceptable when comparing those few minutes to the 18 hours that one is awake. Deciding it was high time to reassess my time, I added up all the minutes that I spent mindlessly scrolling through my phone, and then compared that to the time I spent awake. For example, if I spend five minutes on social media, twice an hour (probably low-balling here), and I am awake for 18 hours, I spend three hours of my day with my nose pressed to a cold, glass screen. But why?
Snippets of inspirational videos and miraculous human feats motivate you to act. Joe Rogan expounding on laziness. Tiger Woods in the green jacket. Oprah and Marilyn Monroe quotes. Examples abound. These posts are meant to enrich your life, but they become a detriment when they are used as the main source of your motivation. It is impossible to use alchemy techniques to transform the words of others into your fuel. The wellspring of your creative individuality flows within and is refined by your fellow man.
The revealing and/or futile humor of memes has the ability to pull you from fatigue, self-analyzation and even stress by way of comic relief. One flick of the thumb later, the relief is gone. The next few minutes are spent trying to re-capture it, and by the time you put your phone down, it’s forgotten all together. What doesn’t disappear is the relief provided by human connection. The least profound forms of human interaction are far more vital to our well-being than the trivial pings of satisfaction that we receive from social media. Things like learning something about someone who grew up 5,000 miles away from you, locking eyes over a cup of coffee, receiving encouragement from peers, sharing a laugh and even a good debate.
Life is a constant stream of ups and downs. Some days, you kill it. Others, you choke. The days that you kill it, you want to share it. Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting others to know of your triumphs, but the desire to receive approval via social media (in the form of likes) creates an anxiety that overshadows the joy you experienced in that moment. The days you choke are spent comparing your down day to the online lives of people who seem to be killing it all the time, but these people aren’t killing it any more than you are. They have days that don’t go their way. Same as you. Same as me. Sometimes that is forgotten. The world we live in has us hardwired to strive for an enhanced experience, so comparing ourselves with the colorful and evocative posts we encounter on a daily basis is inevitable.
Upon realizing these things, I decided it was time to give the accounts a break. To solidify my commitment, I deactivated all of my accounts. Here is what has transpired in the process.
Obviously, I spend less time looking at my phone. This allows me more time to look around and notice things that I had failed to notice before. It is amazing how many more people you interact with when your nose isn’t glued to the glass. My daily work output is far more prolific without the escape that social media offered me. My homework is seldom procrastinated, which leaves more time for me to do the things that I enjoy. Workouts are more efficient and more common. (Fun fact: social media possesses the uncanny ability to turn a 45-minute workout into a 90-minute affair.) Since I spend less time reading other people’s captions and epithets, I spend more time turning paperback pages.
Most importantly, I have taken myself out of a futile, online game that carries no clout in the real world. This relief of pressure has been well-worth the cost of deactivation.
Employers don’t care how many likes you received on your St. Patrick’s Day picture. Potential suitors aren’t concerned with the lighting in your recent post. The people that love you and cherish your existence don’t care how many followers you acquire, or how many likes you accrue. Neither should you.