The first social media account I ever had was technically an MSN account. I wanted one so badly when I was 12, because all my friends had them and would talk for hours online after school. I don't actually even know if MSN counts as social media. There were no public posts or public profiles, you had to specifically add friends and then you could only talk to those people if they added you back, and if they removed you, you were SOL and couldn't do anything to them. I used MSN right through high school until it fell out of popularity and was eventually scrapped. Facebook adding an IM feature really killed it- and I really miss just having an IM platform nowadays.
I've had a Youtube account for a long time too- I don't make any content, I just sometimes leave comments and like that I can have playlists and things saved. This is probably the least toxic one since I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn on notifications for replies to my comments, and I don't want to. I've refused to link it to my google account for years. I don't want it associated with my real name and I never will. This is maybe an okay place to exist at this point. It provides some nice content, I can choose what I want to see, and I've gone back to old playlists many times to amuse myself.
Facebook was probably the next one. I was one of the last kids my age to get it- halfway through grade 12. My mom forbade us from getting an account until we were I think 15, and I had no interest in it until 16 or 17 when I realized that was the cool new place to hang out after school. In those days (around 2012) it was a very different place. We'd make posts and friends would add hundreds of comments, creating in-jokes that would have me in stitches that we'd reference the next day at school, or using it as a tool to collectivize work when IB got difficult. It was helpful when I left for university. But soon after that it changed- suddenly every company had a Facebook page, and now it feels like almost the entirety of my timeline is just posts from pages, or ads of posts from pages, and very little actual content, or people re-sharing viral posts made by one person about the latest hot-button topic. I mean, it's great that I can follow and engage with local politicians (at least, those that are with-the-times enough), but it's not personal anymore. One of my friends deleted her profile years ago, and though I know it's not even remotely necessary to have it anymore, I've been tempted for years.
I was on twitter very briefly between 2013 and 2014. All I did was get into arguments with companies and not understand how the platform worked. I followed a lot of people whose content I thought I was interested in, only to find that scrolling through twitter was actually really, really boring. I deleted it within a year and have never been tempted to go back. It gave me nothing.
Around this time I had just received an iPhone, which meant that Instagram and Snapchat were suddenly available to me. These ones have been pretty interesting because they both started with that same kind of only-interact-with-your-friends structure. Both have changed considerably since I first joined. Snapchat added stories and now has a whole page of Branded Content from companies. I've fallen down that Branded Content rabbit hole many times in a desperate attempt to escape my life and look at something on the internet in bed instead. But this only really happened when I wanted to get away from Instagram. Instagram for me still consists of a non-revealing name and a private account, but I've followed public brands and different public profiles from time to time. I'm starting to notice now that the majority of my feed is taken up by these people I don't even know, even if their content is really well done. That always comes because I'd unfollow everyone I didn't know personally and would be left with almost no content ever posted. In my desperate need for entertainment, I'd follow more people again. I'd spend hours on the explore page. When I tried to delete the app and take breaks from time to time, I'd just switch over to snapchat and do the same thing. For now they've both been replaced by another app that I'll get to later.
The next one was tumblr. This was my favourite and I still find myself scrolling through people's blogs. For a while Tumblr felt like the centre of the internet, the place to be. I'd see memes generated there trickling down to Facebook eventually, and I liked that I felt like I was seeing everything right as it happened. I felt like I was there to witness a lot of important moments in terms of internet culture. It also fed into some of my not-so-bright sides; I was suckered into believing far too many things and the people I was interacting with didn't view me as a person. I was just some blog. The way I left might sound embarrassing to some, but those aren't really my people anyway. I was being aggressively gaslit about a very basic facet of reality, and at the time I had just started grad school and was struggling through the refeeding portion of intuitive eating. I had just moved away from my boyfriend, was living at home again, had no idea how grad school was supposed to work, and was less than a year out of a planned suicide date. I had what I can only call a small breakdown, complete with self harm and all, and my boyfriend was becoming very concerned. He asked me to consider whether or not being on this platform was best for me. At the time, I was met with a lot of adrenaline whenever I opened the app or loaded the website as more and more people found my sideblog and decided I wasn't worthy of basic respect or humanization, and was instead worthy of wishes that I choke and die, that I be referred to as "it," all that classic tumblr stuff. In an impulsive move, I logged out, got rid of all the remember-my-password features, and decided to just NOT use the platform for a while. Two years later I signed in to prevent my account from being lost, clicked around for 5 minutes, and left. I remember how much it sucked.
I'm technically on Linkedin, but I use it so infrequently and find it so useless beyond having a resume available for anyone who googles me that I don't worry about how it impacts my life at all. I imagine when I graduate I might use it more for job-searching and some kind of weird networking, but for now it just exists as a professional public record of myself. The things I want to be attached to and associated with by people who might let me one day sell them my labor.
The same can be said for Pinterest. It's such a weird place at this point, but it's a nice place to gather pictures into categories. It never sucks me in for very long, but it has its uses. It's probably one of the least personal ones there is because it feels like so little of what's posted is actually from real people anymore, and the vast majority of users are just there to gather images. Half of the images I see are shitty weight loss ads, and the rest are professionally taken photographs that have trickled their way through the internet to be posted there.
Reddit was the second to latest one. I was on it for less than a year. I'd been scrolling through it without an account for a while and noticed it was doing odd things to the voice inside my head. I'd been filled with self doubt, and decided if I really wanted to be on this platform, I'd make an account so I could visit less toxic subreddits. For a while, this was really nice. There's a decent intuitive eating/anti-diet/HAES community on there that's well-moderated. I finally got to engage in feminist discourse in a way other than memes. And then I started getting in arguments again. I'm not sure at this point if that's a natural skill I have, a natural flaw I have, or just how these platforms operate. Probably some mix of all three. It got to a point where it was the same as it had been with Tumblr. I took a couple of breaks, but the straw that broke the camel's back came this summer. I left a nice message for someone from the IE community I'd been privately messaging and signed out. I have no intention of opening that website again, unless I'm looking for reviews of something.
The last one was TikTok. I know that's lame. I definitely resisted for a while, and their model sucks you in pretty well. This is one I've only been on since May or so, and it's provided me with a lot of entertainment and late nights. It gave me a window into a lot of different content I hadn't interacted with much on other platforms- particularly indigenous content. But I've noticed a lot of things lately that remind me of how Tumblr used to be, namely, the designations of different "sides" of the app and the overwhelming lack of critical thinking visible in a lot of content. On the one hand, I can follow people who remind me of me, who are going through similar journeys and struggles, and people who are trying to share help and advice who are further along in the same journey. I can watch people grow a lot of plants. I can watch people convert vans to live in them. I can learn about social issues going on in other parts of Canada that my CBC news app somehow hasn't covered yet. I can learn new recipes. I can find small businesses to support (I've bought one or two things from small businesses I found on this app). The privacy violations and angry teenagers calling me "Karen" for telling them not to cheat (and there's a whole host of thoughts behind the Karen thing, but for now I invite you to consider the implications behind the lack of a male equivalent for that term) have made me question whether or not this is something to use in the long term, especially combined with how it is rapidly turning into an app that led me to break down once upon a time.
And the thoughts on quitting each of these are complicated. I've logged out of Facebook and Instagram for short periods, and in not wanting to be "that person" who brags about taking time off, left without saying anything. This led to a lot of annoyance from people who had sent me things I didn't see, who assumed I'd still be there. I also did this with snapchat for a while. Snapchat is complicated because I've gotten a lot- and I mean a LOT- of compliments both from my friends and from my sister's friends that my snap stories made them laugh so hard. That kind of praise feels really, really good and is hard to get away from. Sometimes though I think creating it is my way of dealing with stressful situations, but it's not always the best way to deal. It also means that any time I create something to share that doesn't get that kind of reaction, I feel let down. It's an odd thing to navigate.
There's also that changing-my-mind guilt that comes with any of this. At some point in the past, I thought each of these platforms were a good idea and recommended them to others. But nearly a decade and a half of being on these platforms is really making me start to think about whether I was right as everything becomes more commodified and alike. Some of these platforms has caused me to find ways to spend money I may not otherwise have spent. I think probably in terms of my immediate social circle, I use them more than anyone else I know, which is alienating in and of itself. Is it really a good idea to be this involved when I've taken a break from every single platform I've ever joined? Or is that normal- no one should be expected to use these things in the same way forever? I get some anxiety about quitting- it feels like cutting off a lot of connections, and beyond that, a lot of ways to know about ways to make new connections (things like volunteering opportunities, etc). Almost all the swing dance organization in my city is done over Facebook. I've learned a lot about racial inequality through Instagram. Pinterest is helping me get a handle on the very basic beginnings of wedding planning. And so on and so forth.
I heard a podcast episode about this book (a podcast I wouldn't have found without Instagram, of course) and got my hands on a copy of it from the library and read it. The book was "24/6" by Tiffany Schlain, and it really resonated with me. The author details how her family has done a "Tech Shabbat" for many years where they shut off all devices with screens on Friday night, have a nice dinner together, and spend then until Saturday evening completely unplugged. She also writes about the benefits of doing this, the dangers of being constantly connected, and gives some how-to advice. It made me think about all my anxiety about camping this summer. I was so afraid that in the few days I'd be off the grid, somehow the lab would be back up and running and I'd miss everything and have to scramble to catch up. I felt guilty about just not being accessible. I think some of the guilt associated with leaving social media is the same. Where do people reach me? How will I remain connected? How will I find new opportunities? How will I connect with my community? And as everyone is saying these days- this is all obviously way more difficult in an era where face to face communication is no longer the ideal, and it remains unknown when it will be ideal again.
Maybe it would be worthwhile to set some limits- except that every time I do I almost always break them immediately. I think the issue is that I don't think of stuff to fill the void that not being on my phone leaves (and I know that's pathetic. I get it). I can't handle not having a place to turn to immediately distract myself from my anxiety or amuse myself when I'm bored or feel like I'm "having some fun" in a busy day before I go to bed only to have another busy day the next day. Or the most tricky void of all- the fact that social media feels like a break at my desk (which I should have known would signal to my brain that we aren't taking a break at all). I can just have a break and not worry about missing an important email! I'll be right here to answer it! And like.. the horror of that statement is not lost on me.
It's all compounded too by the lack of time off I took this summer. I was operating under the impression that I had to be available to do lab work once we reopened in July because who knows when things might shut down again... but this means the last time I took a break longer than a long weekend was last Christmas. We all remember (or at least my blog does) how well I was doing mentally when last Christmas came around. I'm anxious right now that there's something I'm forgetting to do. The last time I took a full day away from screens was literally in June when I went camping and got engaged.
So I guess there is no good solution. I wish I'd been old enough to experience the web before social media, but by the time I was 10, Facebook already existed. I've grown up in a family that's been well-off enough to always have had a computer, and got my first computer at 12. I've picked up my phone probably 50 times while writing this whole thing, feeling uncomfortable as I do, since I know it's not perfect, and just wanting to escape into one of many apps.
If anyone has a good solution, or wants to talk to me about this- leave a comment, message me irl, or just feel free to think about this for like, 243 days and then do any of those- all are fine. I'm willing to bed it's not just me who struggles with these things.
