At the beginning of the year, I was chatting with my lovely sister-in-law. She had stopped using social media, and what she told me about her experience landed in my gut:
I met up with some friends who I hadn’t seen in a while, and I realized that since I hadn’t been on social media, I didn’t know what they’d been up to. It was actually really nice — hearing what they’d been up to without having already heard about it on Instagram.
I realized that I don’t *want* to know what my friends are doing through social media. I want to hear it from them, directly.
Hearing about her experiences helped me name a subtle feeling that I hadn’t been able to previously put into words: I didn’t feel great when I saw friends’ posts on social media.
On one hand: Duh. There’s no shortage of research linking social media use to envy, loneliness and depression.
But on the other hand, I hadn’t really acknowledged to myself before the subtle ways in which social media was affecting how I felt about my relationships.
If I was being truly honest with myself, two things were true:
I didn’t love looking at posts by my old friends who lived far away. When we did catch up, I was so happy to hear that they were having fun. But somehow watching on social media emphasized a slight feeling of distance between us, and made me feel more disconnected from them.
I also didn’t love looking at posts from new friends, who I was just starting to get to know. Their social media presence, while always very nice, gave me a different experience of them than actually being with them directly. I wanted to get to know the real them, not their online personas.
Inspired by that conversation, I’ve mostly stayed off of social media, too, for the past eight-ish months.
The results? On a personal level, I’ve loved it. I haven’t noticed any reduction in the quality of my most important relationships. On the contrary — I really enjoy being able to hear what my friends are up to without having heard about it on social media first. I love forming connections with new friends, without being influenced by their online presence. That subtle sense of envy or eavesdropping has faded away.
And, of course, there’s the extra time!
So here’s my question for you: How might your experience of your personal relationships be different if you only heard from your friends directly, not through social media? What would you lose, and what would you gain?
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I will also acknowledge that many of us use social media for professional reasons, and cannot simply stop using it. But I think that it’s possible to get at least some value from this idea, even if we can’t completely stay off social media for professional reasons (or simply if we don’t want to for personal reasons!). How could you customize this to your situation?
I’m in your corner rooting for you.
Katie
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