I finally did it. I ditched Instagram completely. Instagram isn’t the first social media platform I’ve dropped. I’m no spring chicken and have divorced Friendster, Myspace, Twitter (when it was still called that), Facebook, and TikTok. You see, I love to be in the loop and know the latest trends. I love to catch a pop culture reference while chitchatting around the water cooler. So chasing these social media trends felt right to me. I want to be connected.
But I’ve also always gotten fed up at some point and arguably addicted to some of these platforms. It sometimes felt like gambling in Vegas to post something and see if I’d hit the jackpot with those likes and shares. At a certain point, I think I forgot why I was even posting in the first place.
Plus, social media platforms change over time. It used to be OK to post a mediocre photo on Instagram. Now, it feels like I need a professional film studio and production crew to churn out engaging videos. Like I said before, I’m no spring chicken and not loving feeling pressure to look young and cool in video format.
So last month, I ditched Instagram for good. I still have LinkedIn and my loyal email subscriber list on www.playyourwaysane.com, but those things feel decidedly not addictive. I never pull my phone out and check to see if anything fun is happening on LinkedIn because I know that it’s not, and that’s refreshing.
But this social media breakup feels different. I’m not replacing Instagram with the hottest new thing, which got me thinking, What happens to us when we ditch social media? Temporarily, permanently, after over two decades?
Less Stress
Social media does indeed work like gambling. With social media, behaviors like checking your notifications or feed are reinforced by rewards like seeing that someone liked your post or commented something complimentary about you. The thing that makes it super addictive is that these behavioral rewards aren’t consistent. I don’t know if I’m going to get zero likes or a thousand, and it’s that variable reinforcement that really keeps us coming back for more.
One study found that short breaks from Facebook decreased stress levels, especially in excessive social media users. There’s not a lot of research on ditching social media yet, so this study feels important and enlightening. When people become so reliant on and attached to social media, reduced stress doesn’t seem like the only possible outcome. I’ve seen students extremely stressed out because they were asked to put their phones away before an exam. But this study is one tiny clue that a digital detox might help you feel less stressed, and it might go back to ditching those variably reinforced rewards. Yes, it feels great when you hit big and lots of people respond to your post, but it feels crummy when something doesn’t land. Taking a break from the ups and downs seems to lower stress levels, generally speaking.
More Loneliness
It’s not all good news. Another study showed that leaving social media increases loneliness. In the study, which consisted of 68 participants, some ditched social media, and others didn’t. Importantly, it was a randomized study with a control group (the keep social media crew). The study found that abstaining from social media not only increased loneliness but also decreased life satisfaction and increased negative affect (anger, sadness, fear, and guilt). What do we make of these findings? I thought social media was bad for us and stressed us out.
It depends on why we’re using social media in the first place. I’d love to tell everyone to ditch social media and then promise it would mean you’d all live happily ever after, but it turns out that it’s much more complicated than that. If social media is how we connect with others, especially if it’s the primary way we connect, then of course we’ll feel worse when it’s gone.
However, remember that the people in the study were randomized. That means they didn’t decide if they would be in the abstain from social media group or the carry on as usual group, and intention matters here. If you’re thinking about ditching social media, you’re probably doing an inventory of the pros and cons. It’s not just being ripped away from you without your consent.
How to Mitigate the Loneliness to Appreciate the Stress Reduction
But let’s say we do run the risk of feeling lonelier when we deactivate our accounts. What can we do to mitigate that loneliness?
1. Boost Offline Social Ties
The first thing to do to mitigate the negative consequences of saying goodbye to social media is to shore up your offline social ties. I started texting people more and scheduling more coffee meetups. Fill up your social calendar before you make the switch so it doesn’t feel so lonely stepping away from social media.
2. Conduct an Inventory
It’s important to reflect on why you’re using social media, why you’re posting, what you hope to gain from it, and how it negatively and positively impacts your life before calling it quits. If social media is integral to your business or one of your only ways to stay connected to others, it may not make sense to call it quits. It may make more sense for you to do intermittent detoxes to decrease stress levels and social media addiction.
On the other hand, if you reflect on your relationship with social media and find it’s doing more harm than good or if you’re excited about a world without it like I was, it might make more sense for you to walk away.
Bottom line: reflect first. Don’t be impulsive when it comes to deactivating your accounts.
3. Experiment With a Social Media-Free Life
You can also use those mini-digital detoxes to see what life is like without social media. As time goes on, if you’re feeling happier without it during your breaks or if you’re noticing you’re using your extra time productively and not feeling lonely, you may reach a point where getting rid of your accounts altogether feels right for you.
4. Find Other Ways to Stay Current
One of the things I was most concerned with was losing touch with the zeitgeist. Would I still understand my 13-year-old students’ latest slang? How would I know when Lady Gaga’s latest single would drop?
I have good news. If staying current is important to you, there are other ways to do it besides endlessly scrolling. I do a bit of online research throughout the week to explore pop culture, and I find that I now pay extra attention when I hear the latest trends in conversation.
Ask questions and stay curious when talking to people in real life. Then take the nerdy approach of researching what you missed out on. Instead of passive pop culture consumption, you’ll have to take a more active approach.
The proof that you don’t need social media to stay current is that I knew what “reheating nachos” meant well before my teenage students.
More Time for Life
On average, people spend over two hours on social media each day. So if you finally do decide to quit for good, you’ll have a lot more time on your hands.
Now that I’m off social media, I have time to learn a second language, time to go to the gym every day, time to write this post, time to write a novel, time to grade papers and create lesson plans, time to go to the roller rink with my kids, time to plan a trip around the world I may never even take, time to dream, and time to think.
Two hours a day amounts to a month of extra time each year. And knowing that might be the best justification for finally logging off for good.
