The key difference...

 As per usual around here, I've been thinking about my social media usage. More so this time in how it relates to other people, because a few things have happened that I don't think I've spoken about on here. 

The first was quite a shift for me- I deactivated my facebook account. Why? Because I was invited to my best friend's daughter's birthday and missed it because she only invited me on facebook. I could be livid about that- how could she not text me, we text all the time?- but she's a busy mom now. Inviting people on facebook was convenient for her and the last she'd heard from me I checked it now and then. That was true, but in this case I didn't check until after the party had already happened. I was beside myself. She and I are ok- she knew and trusted I wouldn't just skip something like that for no reason- but I realized I had to make a decision, because I had also been invited to like 3 other events I'd missed. People were using facebook as an invitation system for events, and because I had a profile there, it was fair game of them to assume that one way or another, I'd get the message. 

So I deactivated. I kept messenger, and haven't had a facebook profile since the end of July 2024. And you know what? I don't miss it. 

The other thing that happened in July 2024 was the end of my wet lab work, and really diving into my thesis writing. I wrote my thesis largely during August-October, 2024, and in those 3 months (wow. was that only three months? Let's be honest here too- I wrote most of it in October) I realized really quickly that instagram was distracting me again. I deleted it sometime in August, citing a need to focus on graduation.

Well, I've graduated (oh yeah! Small update. I'm Dr. Swegan now, I did it 🥳) but I still haven't downloaded instagram. I got rid of snapchat too, partially because a lot of young people kept implying it was cringe to have snapchat as an almost-30-year-old, and because I kept getting sucked into the garbage content they have on their version of an explore page. My friends were bewildered, saying they didn't get sucked in, and I was like yeah, because you have better apps to use. This is all I have. When I got rid of that one, I turned to youtube shorts of all places. Truly, I was just desperate for my short video fix. For the past few weeks I've been sticking to just tumblr, and eventually yesterday I realized I wanted a break from that too. For once not for any dramatic reason, just because I wanted to take a break. I've read three books in the past two days, so suffice to say I've been starved for input.

As I think on this, though, something keeps coming up that I've failed to consider, which is that yeah, ok, on a base level, I am kind of reverting to an older time, regressing to the past when I didn't even have any of these accounts and when many of these apps did not exist at all. Except today it really smacked me in the face that no, I'm not... because nobody else is. Back then, nobody could be on instagram because there was no instagram. We were all off social media and forced to do other things. Back then it was too much TV that was the issue, too much time surfing the net, probably still too much time playing video games. Now it's all phones. We're always addicted to something. But at least back then I didn't get constantly pestered by people about how annoying it was that they had to screen record tiktoks to send them to me, that I hadn't seen their snapchat story updates and so was out of touch with their life while everyone else was up to speed, and I didn't frequently enter conversations with multiple other friends where they'd all start talking about some event in the life of one friend that I was simply unaware of as if it was common knowledge. 

I'm not saying my friends are bad people. One of them admitted to me recently that really she just wanted me back on social media because it was more convenient for her. They're just living in the modern world like anybody else, the same way as other people. But it's hitting me now that by trying to escape doomscrolling because I know there's no way to moderate myself on those platforms, I'm functionally escaping life. I mean, it's not even just my friends- nearly every local small business I know and love does 99% of their web presence on social media, if not 100%. And I get it. It's free to make an account on those, and when you're trying to get a business off the ground and reach people, well, they're all on the app. It's just annoying when I can't order the cookies I like because the person who makes them only takes requests in instagram DMs, and sorry, but I don't want to have to download the app, log in, ignore the probably hundreds of notifications I have now to just find her page and send her one message and then what, leave the app on my phone until she responds? until I've picked up the cookies? And just trust that I'll resist temptation that long? Give into the scroll for a few days? It's all so damn inconvenient I've just been going without the stupid cookies. I can't look at facebook or twitter without an account... would it kill you to make a fucking website? But then even when they do, as is the case with an ice cream place I like, they barely update it. Please, queen, you can't just have rotating flavours and only tell the social media-ites when they're available. Think of the rest of us.

It's just annoying that these platforms have ensnared us so that now in order to connect with friends, support local business, and hear about local news sometimes (I can't tell you the number of times a local traffic jam only has information posted about it on fucking twitter), you have to also be served an ungodly number of ads, curate a platform-self, and resist the temptation to lose yourself in the endless scroll when literally everything about the app is designed to keep you trapped there forever, showing you content you literally didn't log on to see, god damn it facebook stop suggesting groups to me when I just want to see photos of my cousin's new baby!!! It's infuriating! and what's worse is that I am doing this ALL ALONE.

I am the ONLY person I know who is off social media and it is fucking lonely. I can handle being behind on the trends but it hurts when friends post exciting or even mundane updates about their lives and I just don't even know I'm missing it. Because the cost of staying up to date on those apps is too high a price for me to pay. I don't want to spend all my spare time scrolling. I don't know what I want to do with it instead, I just know this ISN'T it, but also that these apps are so fucking addicting that I can't use them in moderation. No, the other apps that block those apps don't work, the screen time limits don't work, the only thing that sort of works is only signing in on my computer, but half these apps don't even work that way. Because they're, you know, apps, not fucking websites. 

I was going to say the worst most ironic and cruel part is that I can't connect with other people doing this, but to be honest, I just haven't looked into forums that much. I'm sure they exist for social media luddites like myself, I'm just intimidated because to be honest I wasn't really old enough to be using the internet that way when that's how it was. That seems insane for a grown adult to say, but on the off chance there are any older, adultier adults reading this, please remember that at the turn of the century, I was in kindergarten. By the time I started really using the internet for much of anything, it was like 2009. Before that was all barbie dot com and looking things up for school sometimes (back when search engines actually worked. remember that? good times). But this isn't really an excuse, I'm sure I could find some. I think the thing I'm really yearning for though is like, real-life connections.

Doing this has made me a little better at that I'd like to think. I don't connect with people via random DM chats that happened to go on for hours anymore, but I do text my friends more often about real stuff, I do call the long distance ones more, etc. I just wish that we could all live an analog life together.

I also know that a lot of different people draw the line in different places. We all know that people have been whining about the dangers of new technology since chalkboards were the hot new thang, and personally I don't think the internet is bad. I think it's just been monetized to shit. I don't even hate the idea of a fucking social media platform. I just want it to be encrypted and honestly I'd pay a small monthly fee to use it if it didn't ever show me ads or suggested posts, did not try to keep me on the app as long as possible, and only let me connect with real life friends to share real life updates. No business accounts! No insane data collection! No memes (I know, I never thought I'd say that, but honestly, they have to go)! No trends! I just want to see like, photos of my friend's new baby, my cousin out camping, heck, even that girl I went to high school with posting about her messy kitchen. Just real ass people showing real ass stuff about their lives. Sure, let it be a highlight reel, whatever, fuck.  

I'm just TIRED OF IT. Tired of social media and it sucking up all my friends' time and attention. Tired of missing out on trends and updates alike. Tired of constantly feeling like a big stick in the mud who won't just be like everybody else and use the damn apps. And don't even get me started on AI, if one more person recommends a suuuuuper great use of AI to me, I'm going to scream. JUST DO IT YOURSELF OH MY GOD WHY CAN'T YOU WRITE AN EMAIL A REFERENCE LETTER A ROUGH DRAFT A BLOG POST A CAPTION... I can't even go there. 

I want this post to end on a slightly hopeful note so I will say the reward of trying to live by your own values is something. Not catching myself in bed scrolling or on the toilet scrolling or at work scrolling is fucking refreshing. It frees up a lot of time and energy, and I'm not getting so angry all the time. I also don't want to constantly film myself and post like an influencer, which is cringey but something I absolutely start doing if I'm on any of these apps for any period of time. Look! Here I am! On my Blog! I'm Writing! Plus I definitely feel like a lot of people are getting fed up with these things, so... here's hoping it won't just be me that I know irl who is social media app-less. On that note: if you were looking for a sign to delete your whatever social media app, this is it! Do it! Just for a week. a month. a year. you're in control. never forget.