Why I got off Social Media!

There are good habits and bad habits — good habits give back: you relax, gain insights, build muscle memory, produce art. Bad habits only take: they drain your energy, take motivation, steal time, produce nothing.

I began using these social media rather early in their inception. I recollect getting on Facebook when there were less than five million users. For my clients, I have built applications that leveraged these same platforms which helped them market services to their customers.

Yes, there are benefits to using these technologies, but over time the concerns of what these platforms were doing to me and society in general, started to outweigh their benefits.

Sadly Facebook has morphed into the primary source of misinformation in the world today. Algorithms based on our likes and our posts that were created with good intentions have now become ways to influence our thinking, spread falsehoods and unfounded fear.

In 2018 a rash of riots in Sri Lanka, my home, fueled by lies on Facebook resulted in many deaths. Similar instances have been well documented in Indonesia and what lead to genocide in Myanmar. Earlier this year Facebook formally apologized to these countries and acknowledged that it was propagated on their platform, even though they claimed no accountability.

The other reason is that I realized that I don’t know most of the people that were part of my social media network. For example, a couple of years back, I joined the Rotary. Very soon many of the members friended me on Facebook. I was somewhat obligated to friend them back. Most of these folk were not people I would ever meet or socialize with outside of our weekly Rotary meeting.

But now I knew an immense amount of information about them, and they of me. Who their family is, where they live, where they vacation, the cool stuff they have, their political and religious views — they were all on full display and so was mine.

Also, many of these folk small business owners, insurance salesmen, realtors, bank loan officers, etc. Unbeknownst to me, I was now part of their business network: a potential customer on their “qualified” customer list. So at some point the friend became a business opportunity.

Like it or not, social media has become our brand. The way we want the world see us. This was the way to quickly tell someone what a great life or person I am and by the way, would you be interested in buying some car insurance?

Lastly, there was “The Habit.” The go-to “thing to do” when you needed a distraction, when you were bored, and even when you were with a group of people. Checking your phone frequently, checking your social media feed or checking who liked your latest postings became intoxicating and also time consuming. I would get up in the morning, sit in bed, and go through my social media and not realize an hour or two had gone by.

It builds compulsive behavior and the phone screen takes over your life.

The habit had gone all wrong — what was like drinking a glass of wine with my dinner, had now become drinking an entire bottle of whiskey every night all by myself. It was a problem that I would deny I had.

So a year ago I deleted my Facebook account. After about two weeks I didn’t miss it, but I would continue to use Twitter and Instagram and recently had started following Tic-Tok.

Twitter was for politics, Instagram was for the bragging, and Tic-Tok was for the dance moves.

About a month ago, after I watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”, I decided- somewhat reluctantly- to delete all the social media apps from my phone.

So where am I now? Not that the hours I spent on social media has been magically been filled with productive endeavors, but I have started reading a couple of books, learning some new skills, gone fishing a bunch of times, and even spent a day chasing a bunch of goats. All this while NOT having my phone with me.

So there were no photos taken, no Facebook post made, no Instagram brags, nor Tweets to promote. Only good memories — memories just for me. In a strange way I feel much better knowing less and sharing less!

I will leave you with this quote:

Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself. — Rumi