I’m Divorcing Social Media
Twenty years.
For two decades, I cultivated, enabled and endured an abusive relationship with social media. It didn’t start this way…but now?
Now I want out.
Rewind to 2004. My first year of college, I was freshly 18 and though I believed that arbitrary number made me an adult, I was green enough to miss the reality that I was still a kid. A teenager with expansive dreams and substantial insecurities, I was full of wonder and positivity and simultaneously, I was lonely to my core. Seeking deep connection, purpose and trusting relationships, I turned my sights onto an emerging and exciting world of opportunity — social media.
My first digital and totally public journal entry was posted January of that year on LiveJournal. Though technically categorized as a blog site, I would spend many years from that point growing a small group of LiveJournal friends both from people I knew offline as well as several others from around the world that I would find on the platform’s community blogs. Many of us were daringly vulnerable and nearly everyone was supportive. We shared our personal thoughts and experiences, exchanged opinions and knowledge and though there were occasional conflicts, I felt an emotional safety in a way that I wasn’t accustomed to. Furthermore, I felt pride and kinship in knowing that others felt safe confiding in me as well.
Myspace came following closely behind. Somewhere early 2005, I created an account and found another digital home. I forged new friendships on the site that carried offline, found new ways to express myself, used it as an unofficial dating site, became enmeshed in a new music community where it helped me to join my first original band, share our music and shows and even found the person who I would eventually marry in 2010.
This new world was more than a platform or a podium, it became an essential tool for my self-esteem and my social life, on and offline.
Soon after, another social media site popped up and I joined. Facebook, as promising as it initially was as a way for University students to find each other, opened up it’s doors to anyone with an email address a few years after it launched. What the site turned into was something that felt radically different than what I experienced with the former. Years went on and suddenly I was feeling the same way about Instagram and Tiktok.
Somewhere along the line, I lost my initial spark with social media when it became less about building personal relationships and crafting deep connection. Myspace and Livejournal became obsolete and Facebook continued to grow and shift. The transition was silent but massively effective; our digital socializing became an exploitative marketing tool tracking our every move. The insidious manipulation was tapping into our insecurities, feeding off of our fears and amping up polarities between it’s users.
My relationship to social media was slowly chipping away at the feeble foundation I had begun to build in my teens and early twenties…but it took too many years to see it.
The vicious cycle continued: the flood of dopamine, a rupture of anxiety, a dive into depression and burst of love bombing had me hooked and for at least 15 years, I was unable to identify the pattern I allowed. The social trap lured, satisfied, starved, coddled, satisfied and starved the attention-seeking middle child in me.
Now it’s time for me to bow out.
I refuse to believe that I am missing out or will fail at my pursuits without the rat race. Though many great things have happened in my life thanks to these platforms, the connections have become shallow and lifeless. Instead of spending energy and time on my creativity offline, too much of my focus is lent to the comparison traps, gawking strangers, privacy concerns, relentless ads and an algorithm that favors quantity over quality. I refuse to subject myself willingly to a machine that uses scarcity marketing tactics and fear of FOMO to keep us compulsively engaged (and often enraged) to line the pockets of these giant media corporations.
I’m excited to see where life takes me after spending more than half of my entire life on social media. I’m excited to see where my creativity takes me as I give myself the gift of releasing the social media pressure and, most importantly, I’m even more curious to see how the relationships that continue to stay in my life after my departure grow deeper.
I’m stoked to sleep a little more.
What’s next? Who knows!
In two weeks, on April 2nd, I’ll make my final posts on Facebook and Instagram and remind everyone where they can find me. I’ll continue this personal blog for musings and pet updates (I know my dogs will be missed the most!) My website will remain updated and I’ll send out periodic newsletters about my work/life updates to anyone who wants to join the mailing list. I’ll be sure to post reminders and links intermittently until I log off for the last time.
If this sparks something in you, I encourage you to dig into that. Reach out to me if you want to chat about it…but please no Facebook or Instagram DMs. :)
Email: Jennhasfeet@gmail.com
Website: JenniferLynBartlett.com
