I decided about two or three weeks ago to take a break from social media all together. Not only did I delete all social media apps on my phone and iPad, but I also disabled the accounts so I was not tempted to “accidently” sign back in. I made this decision after becoming extremely overwhelmed by trying to keep up with everyone. The time I found myself scrolling through newsfeeds was doing nothing but making me compare myself to others and looking at things people had, and I did not. Instead of focusing on all that I did have, I was wasting valuable minutes looking at the things I did not have, or had not yet accomplished. This is when I realized it was time to say au revoir to social media.
In Drake’s newest album, Scorpion, the song Emotionless has one lyric that almost slapped me in the face as soon as I heard it. Not only did it hit me where it hurt, but it made me open up my eyes to the way I was living my life or in some messed up way, how I thought I was living it through other people’s eyes.
“I know a girl whose one goal was to visit Rome. Then she finally got to Rome and all she did was post pictures for people at home. Cause all that mattered was impressing everybody she’s known.”
Drake, Emotionless
After hearing those lines, I immediately thought about my vacations and my travels throughout my life so far. I remember how I was always obsessed with capturing the right moment with a photo or making it seem like I was having the time of my life #iprobablywas #nonewfriends. The thing about photos is that they only capture what we want to see and remember. Last winter, I decided to go through all of my family photos. It started out as a fun winter project that soon turned into me asking what I got myself into. There literally were thousands of photos to go through. At first I wasn’t sure how to tackle the project, but I ended up sorting the photos by the individual or individuals in the picture. After the first 100 or so photos, I reflected on how it is sad that some kids won’t ever get a chance like this to relive childhood memories and look back on when their parents first met. It is very rare to see people picking up prints from their latest Disney vacation, but very common to see all 497 pictures posted on Facebook. This made me sad, because I feel as though tangible photos are a way to literally “hold on to the memories.” Out of all the photos, the ones I found myself either laughing at or crying at the most, were the random, in the moment photos of me strangling my brother, or my Mom and Dad giving each other a holiday smooch. It was those pictures that truly captured that moment in time and allowed me to hold on to the memory.
When we post things now, we post with an intention. The intention to portray a life that we either want, pretend to have, or if lucky enough, actually have. We modify the photo to make the lighting better, make ourselves “tanner” or change the filter so that the sky looks “bluer.” Essentially, we end up distorting the photo so much, that it almost becomes unrecognizable. And that is exactly how I am starting to view social media. I am viewing it in a way that is starting to make people’s lives appear to be unrecognizable or distorted in a sense that doesn’t seem realistic.
In these last couple of weeks, I have gone through a period of withdrawal. I wouldn’t say I was addicted to social media, but if I had a couple free minutes on hand, it was a guarantee that I was scrolling through Instagram. I had backed off Facebook for a while and even deleted the app on my phone, because it was just the same political outcry or selfies complete with wedding pictures and engagement announcements. And in the end, I quickly realized I didn’t know who half the people were now on my newsfeed… all because they had gotten married and changed their last name. No lie, for a solid month I thought for sure my page had been hacked because I didn’t put two and two together with the whole name changing business. But needless to say, I felt “left out” and not a part of this “group” I had formed in my head. I felt silly when people spoke about a post regarding someone’s engagement announcement or even embarrassed when a friend asked me if I had seen her daughter’s pictures on Facebook. My response, “No, I don’t have Facebook anymore. Can you email or text me them?” The responses that followed were “Oh, well um yeah, I will send you a couple (aka not all of them because I uploaded a total of 87)” or “Well let me just pull them up on my account and you can scroll through” and finally, the infamous response, “Why don’t you have Facebook anymore!!?”
Why didn’t I have Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, well, hmmmm, maybe because I don’t want to see all 87 pictures of your child or maybe because I would actually rather enjoy seeing your daughter in person and not through a screen. Now I get that social media is a wonderful way for family and friends to stay in touch, and maybe I just need to “clean” up my followers list, but sometimes I just find myself getting extremely overwhelmed by it all. And it makes me question, how much of it is real?! Like I said earlier and similar to what Drake preaches, a picture can be deceiving and the pictures that are posted, are usually chosen with discretion. People don’t want show the bad parts of their lives, similar to how they don’t want to show the bad pictures that were captured. But the bad pictures and the bad parts of people’s lives, are what make people real. So is it safe for me to say social media is not real? Yes, I think it is.
If there is one thing I have come to realize, it is that I want people to be real. I expect people to be real with me, because 9 times out of 10, I will be real with them. Ask anyone who knows me and they will say, I am about the realest person there is. I don’t bullshit and I can’t lie. I know what I want and I know what I don’t want. I am not afraid to call people out on their lies and their fakeness. Does that get me in trouble? Absolutely. Does it make a lot of people not like me? Of course. So in the end, I made the decision to give up on something that did not reflect on the person I am or the people I want to be surrounded by. I find that by being off social media, it has allowed me to focus on myself, on my relationships, and allowed me to do some self-reflecting and soul searching along the way. The feeling of not knowing what is going on in some people’s lives or wasting the energy in caring, has actually been one the best decisions I have made in a while. I am now able to be selfish for once and put my needs, wants and desires first.
“They always ask “Why let the story run if it’s false”? You know a wise man once said nothing at all.”
Drake, Emotionless
