About a month and a half ago I completely deactivated my social media accounts. I did this for a few reasons. The first being that I felt I was wasting a significant amount of my time. I would open up Instagram scroll through until it told me I had seen everything from the last few day. Then I’d open up face book and scroll through ads and shared memes until I realized I had already seen everything. Then I’d close facebook and open instagram.
I was looking through the settings on instagram when I stumbled upon a feature that told me how much time I was spending on instagram each day. It was spending nearly 30 minutes a day on instagram. I figured it was probably a similar number for facebook. I figured I could probably use that time more productively. And while that time was definitely spread out over an entire day I felt like it was time not really adding value to my life.
Beyond the wasted time it just feels disingenuous. We share all of the snippets from our lives with the world and together they paint this picture. But that picture doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story. We have all these friends we know so many things about and yet we don’t know at all. And for me knowing all of these things felt as though it was actually a block on real conversation.
I’ve taking time away from social media before and I always come back. I’ve come back this time because it can be a resource to connect with and meet people who have similar interest. I reactivated my facebook so I could find climbing partners in Spain. And I reactivated my instagram, because I’m going climbing in Spain and I don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to use these snippets to paint the picture of myself as someone who is always off on some epic adventure.
Dustdevil 