What it’s like to have a social media detox

We often forget that we are easily scared mammals that love gossip from neighboring tribes.

The Internet broke the information firewall between nations. Today we just need to watch the TV for 45 minutes and to get an unhealthy dose of death and misery across the planet. The same thing goes with just about every news website.

Social media not only deliver this information to your front door, it also carries the other reader's comments that too often comes in forms of outrage, disgust, sadness, which then breeds more negative feelings.

Honestly, it's very difficult to cut social media.

We like to tell ourselves that those who managed to quit (and are informing us of how bad it is) are being snobs or acting superior: but the truth is unfortunately that we are just feeling defensive of our inability cut the habit.

I managed to get off of facebook and my mental health improved greatly, enough that I actually notice it. However, that was insanely hard and I did it years ago... and to this day I get tempted to go back.

I'm still on Instagram, I'm on tiktok, I'm on Twitter.

Twitter in particular always leaves me angry when I close it: people keep telling me that it's my fault, that I'm using the tool wrong, that I don't curate my feed enough.

I don't care, the truth is I can't quit because I feel like I'll be out of the loop, that people will not be able to reach me and I'll lose out on being a member of society.

For example: I lost connection with half of my family when I deleted whatsapp.

At some point we have to recognise that we've transitioned the majority of communication to these platforms: and telling people to quit is unreasonable.

I say this as a person who has tried, I recognise it is hard, I even believe it to be _necessary_ and even I can't do it.

Social media has taught us that some human group dynamics work at small scale but not at large scale. At large scale they have a much more sinister effect on society. One of these seems to be shame. Social media creates purity spirals, driven by fear of public shame. These spirals lead us to highly unethical places where not only are individual lives destroyed, but the progress of humanity is held back by kneejerk thinking, dogma and puritanism.

It's great that more and more people are starting to question whether social media is having an overall positive or negative affect on their own mental health. I'd like us to recognise, discuss, and combat, some of the wider problems that social media have brought, and how they're degrading to society as a whole.

Have you tried quitting cold turkey?

Like going to delete your Twitter account right now?

I got off Instagram and Facebook about 2 years ago and never got on Tik-Tok and I can safely say it was one of the best choices I ever made. I am still on Twitter which I check about once every few days for about 10 minutes.

I realized how my peers (umivesity students) are affected by social media, most of them are endlessly circling instagram and tik-tok every time there is a spare second. Once I got off I discovered how much time it frees up for thinking and/or doing other activities. I get the feeling that people are losing the joy of being alone with one's thoughts. The hard part of being off social media is the fact that it is such a central part of our social interactions, sometimes I feel "out of the loop" and I still get A LOT of weird looks when I say to people that I am off social media.

All in all I am still convinced that being off social media is a net positive and I definitely advise people to try and see how it works out for them.