Breaking Up with Social Media?

Why I'm considering leaving Facebook and Instagram

Last week Meta asked me to fill out a survey that included all kinds of questions about how I felt about the value their various services did or did not add to my personal life and to the world as a whole. I had one (qualified) semi-positive thing to say and realized that all of my other answers were deeply negative. Not for the first time, I wanted to trash the whole thing. And not for the first time I thought, "If I wasn't an author who has been encouraged to engage readers through social media, I'd delete my accounts today."

I also realized how much I miss the Internet of the Aughties, which was largely blog-based. I loved that Internet. I published my own blog and followed about a dozen, very deliberately and with complete joy. There was no algorithm pushing me to look at or like or follow anything other than what I found myself. And finding a creator out there you didn't know about was like finding something precious at a flea market.

I liked that Internet better, in part, because it was more like the world I grew up in. You still had to search out people and things you were interested because they weren’t constantly being thrust into your field of vision (along with a bunch of stuff you have absolutely no interest in). It’s the difference between strolling leisurely through an antique shop looking for that one gem and being assaulted by multiple salesmen on commission when walking into Art Van Furniture.

Even the early iterations of Facebook and Instagram were that way. There was a time, my good people, when only a few people you knew were on Facebook (and none of their moms were). There was a time, dear children, when Instagram was just beautiful photos. And there was a time—oh, a glorious time!—when you got to the end of your newsfeed and you simply . . . stopped.

Yes, yes, there was a time before the Infinite Scroll that has been sucking away hours of your life for years. (If you haven’t watched The Social Media Dilemma, you need to get on that.) There was a time before social media was mostly ads for things you don’t need and stupid 30-second videos that are destroying your attention span and all those dumb things your uncle used to forward to his whole email list that would prompt dozens of his Boomer friends to reply all comments like, “Cute!” and “LOL!” and “Those were the good old days.”

And before the Internet of the Aughties, there was an even better Internet, the Weird Internet of the Nineties, the Internet where people made websites that were about absolutely nothing. Dancing bananas singing about peanut butter and jelly, badgers and mushrooms, an angry little guy in a lucha libre mask and boxing gloves checking his email.

For years now I have had a negative relationship with social media. There were spikes in that negativity in 2016 and 2020 (gee, I wonder why). During both of those years, I unfriended, unfollowed, muted, and blocked. I whittled my bloated personal Facebook friend list down to 250 people I actually know who actually know me, at least in some way, usually because we are or have been friends in real life. But if I’m honest, if I wasn’t afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings, I could get that down below fifty.

And at that point, what, really, is the point of even having Facebook? Because I would have so small a following, that small group of people would likely not even see anything I posted, bombarded as they are with the aforementioned ads and videos and dubious “facts” no one bothered to run through Snopes.

There are some artists I follow on Instagram that I would miss seeing, but they all have websites I could check from time to time if I really wanted. There are some real friends on Facebook I don’t talk to in real life, but if all I’m doing is looking at the pictures of their kid’s first day of school and then scrolling on, am I really maintaining the friendship at all? Aren’t real friends worth calling or texting individually?

And as far as me dropping out and no longer adding the occasional pretty picture of my garden or a Great Lake to the sea (bilgewater?) of other people’s mindless Infinite Scrolling, well I can share those right here.

There’s one right now!

And another!

Amazing. It’s almost like the Internet of the Aughties when I would share longform writing and photos on my blog, but with a higher pixel count.

My husband recently downgraded his phone to one with a very small screen, specifically so he would be less tempted to waste time on it. He’s really happy about it.

I think I would be happier and waste a lot less time (and destroy my brain less) by leaving social media altogether and focusing on sharing the way I used to: through a blog.

This year I started two Substacks. One, Experimental Wolves, is writer-oriented and designed to fill my need to connect with writers and help them with brainstorming and craft development, and also to share thoughts about the writing life. The other (the one you’re reading right now) is reader-oriented. It’s a replacement for my newsletter and a nod to my blogging past, a time I truly enjoyed, no caveats or qualifications needed.

I've been mentally positioning 2025 as kind of a sabbatical year for me after publishing six books in six years. A year when I can focus on writing and on my own real life as my widowed mother and mother-in-law need more love and attention, my son is entering his last couple years of high school, and we have two international trips planned. It seems a natural time to deactivate my Facebook and Instagram accounts and just see how life feels when I do (I predict it will feel great).

I’d still show up here on Substack. In fact, I’d show up more.

What do you think? What’s your relationship with social media like? Have you ever tracked the time you spend on it? (There are apps for that.) Can you describe the level of real connection and pleasure that time gives you? What have you lost to it?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.