Giving Up Social Media for Lent

Why it wouldn't matter even a little if I disappeared entirely from Instagram and Facebook

Oh, hey there! Guess what? I’m still here. Maybe after my last post you wondered if I was okay or if perhaps I was heading for Depression Gorge. But I said I’d be back, and here I am. I just skipped February, that’s all. 😉

And so we have come upon Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. As part of my observance this year, I’ve deactivated my Instagram and Facebook author accounts, which feels like a risky move as I head into a busy time of events as a result of The Lady with the Dark Hair being named a Michigan Notable Book (my third book to receive that award).

How will people know where I’ll be?!

Well, I’ll just get that out of the way right now. I’ll be visiting libraries in Midland, Clinton, Grand Haven, Whitehall, and Holton during the months of May and June (because those were months I wanted to be busier😥) and you can get more specific information at my website on the events page: https://erinbartels.com/home/events/

There. It’s done. Now you know. Tell your friends.

Besides being the beginning of Lent this year, March is Women’s History Month—what better time to read The Lady with the Dark Hair? If you haven’t checked that book out yet, you can get it here, here, here, and many other places. (Try your local bookstore first, please. And if they don’t have it, ask them to order it. They will be happy to.) If you have read it, please rate and review it on Amazon, Goodreads, and/or Bookbub. Reviews help other readers find it!

And with all that self-promotion out of the way…

Let’s talk about why it doesn’t matter if I never get back on Instagram or Facebook.

First, why consider leaving social media? If you haven’t read it yet, this post from back in August tells you why I, personally, am questioning my use of social media. After that post went live, I was more off social media than on. But it was still there. It still crept into my days. I still wasted time on it. I still felt my attention span and my ability to concentrate on deep work fragmenting. I still reached for my phone to fill small spaces of time, which often stretched to longer than I intended.

Beyond my own feelings for how it does or does not add value to my life, there’s a lot of hard evidence that it’s just bad for people, both individually and at an all-of-humanity level.

Have you watched The Social Dilemma yet as I suggested?

Or could you spare 15 minutes to watch this TED Talk by Cal Newport (author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, Slow Productivity, and other great books)?

Go ahead…I’ll wait.

The argument usually made for writers and other creatives for keeping and even doubling down on social media is that it’s part of your platform allowing you to sell books. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t sell books. And that’s well-known in the publishing industry. (Just as endorsements don’t generally help you sell books.) Social media doesn’t necessarily even help you connect with many actual people, whether readers or potential readers.

I’ve been tracking the actual views of my posts on Instagram as compared to the number of followers I have and I can tell you, it’s usually less than 20% of my “audience” that actually sees anything. The number of followers I have on both Facebook and Instagram has remained steady, with a little growth here and there, for some time. But those who follow me there are people who already like my work. They’re not people that found me some other way and then ope! they discover I’m a novelist and then go out and buy a book.

In fact, the exact opposite is true. People who follow me on social media are already reading my books. That’s why they looked for me on social media. And there are other ways of keeping in touch than Facebook and Instagram, which, let’s face it, are much more about shoving dumb videos in your face that are decimating your ability to concentrate for any length of time than showing you content from the actual accounts you follow. (This rather long article by Cory Doctorow explains why.)

I used to really love Instagram when it was people sharing beautiful pictures. Now it’s almost all videos. There is a reason I chose to be on Instagram and chose not to be on TikTok. I don’t want to be on TikTok. But now Instagram feels like TikTok.

For a while, I enjoyed Facebook. Then it became political and toxic. And then it too became a bunch of videos.

I’m not interested in wasting my one life on this earth, one minute at a time, watching 60-second videos, even if some of them are about cute animals or talented gymnasts or…hmmm…nope, that’s about the sum of what I watch. I don’t buy celebrity gossip magazines, but my feed is filled with it. I’m often suddenly bombarded by an onslaught of a particular type of post—for a while it was long-haired German Shepherds that I’m 80% sure were AI-generated. And even if I happen upon an interesting post about history there are two big problems: 1. How do I know it is even accurate? and 2. I stay with it for such a short time that I almost immediately forget what I just “learned” anyway.

I don’t want to live a bunch of life that’s not worth remembering.

And I definitely don’t want to waste any more time. I’m 45 years old. Probably past the halfway point of my life. I will never have time to read all of the books I want to read or write all of the books I want to write. So I don’t want to waste whatever precious time I have left watching (or making) “content.”

Content isn’t story. It’s filler. It’s not nourishing. It’s not a feast for the senses. It’s the lowest common denominator striving for your attention. Content is the Taco Bell ground beef to Story’s filet mignon. It’s the watered down church Kool-Aid to Story’s top shelf bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s the Folgers Crystals to Story’s freshly ground and perfectly brewed cortado. And, more and more, it’s not even made by human beings. It’s made by AI.

At this point, social media is not about connecting people with other people. It’s about commanding your attention for as long as possible so it can be sold to the highest bidder. It’s all about content to keep your eyes glued to your screen. Just pointless schlock shoved into every little crevice of your attention. So you never take the time to just think or be a little bored or imagine something crazy anymore. Or—wild concept—save up those little slivers of time in order to do something great with them.

Man! I’m riled up about this. I wish I knew (and at the same time I’m glad I don’t know) how much time I have wasted on social media over the past…oh my gosh, it’s been 18 years. I joined Facebook in 2007. My social media baby is an adult. And it’s probably time for it to move out of my house, my head, my schedule.

We’ll call Lent a trial run. A time to focus on something else. Someone else. No, not me. Him. And what He wants me to do with my one life on this earth.

Which I’m pretty sure isn’t mindlessly scrolling it away.