From social media addict to apathetic

My current relationship with social media, my learnings, realizations and an invitation for you to share yours

Hello hello, welcome back to TBS [The Breathing Space], I’m your space holder and fellow human being Liz (also a certified breathwork facilitator).

This is part of our monthly thematic exploration; where we look at one topic through different resources, questions & journal prompts, practices, and community discussion to see how it is showing up in our life. This month the theme is “my relationship with social media”. Is it toxic? Is it healthy? Do we need to break up, take a pause, continue as is? Let’s find out!

ICYMI:

You can find them here (I will update these links as they are released):
week 1 journal prompts +playlist here.
week 2 guided practice
week 3 community share
week 4 podcast

I'm addicted to Instagram (& social media)

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I’m going to get right into it and start at the end…

My biggest takeaways

Being off social media, or at the very least minimizing my use of it, hasn’t radically transformed my life like I initially thought it would. I haven’t immediately started earning more money, or leading the most exciting, thrilling and “best” version of my life overnight.

I have more time

Being off social media has created more time in my life that I can use for things that will slowly shift my life. I have more time to invest in my business, in my writing, in income generating activities/work, in relationships and seeing people in person or speaking on the phone, in developing hobbies, for reading and other pleasurable activities that we often “don’t seem to have time for”, for cooking from scratch etc. I have regained time from the mindless scroll that I can now use as I see fit. This has definitely brought rewards.

I’m prioritizing relationships again

I find myself investing more time and energy in the things that are important for me, and realizing that relationships need to be more “active” in order to stay alive. This is in contrast to the rather “passive” form that many of my friendships/acquaintances took. When actively using social media I would go to their FB or IG profile and look at their stories and like their photos, without actually talking to them. Do you remember when FB was at its peak and we would call this “creeping”? Now it is simply how we exist in relationship with one another by default. Rather than calling someone on the phone and catching up and, you know, relating to them, I already know all the “updates” because I’ve seen them online. It was a much more superficial way of interacting with others - I wasn’t really interacting with them at all! Just their digital footprint.

Being off socials meant actively reaching out to those most important to me, and catching up with them because I wasn’t consuming the snippets of information they shared online. It also made me realize how far I had drifted from some people in my life and that the only form of relationship we still had was through the apps and likes and occasional comment on a photo. Which is OK, I think friendships and relationships will naturally come and go. In the digital age some may overstay their welcome. What is the threshold for someone to go from friend to simply “follower”? This seems like the modern age equivalent of purgatory; someone who is no longer close to us, but we aren’t letting them go completely. (If you’ve ever creeped an ex or someone you used to have a thing for, then you know what I mean). If a relationship is important, invest in it, and know that some will fade into the background.

Overall, I feel more myself.

I’m more content with my life because I’m comparing it less (both consciously and unconsciously) to what I see online. I’m able to appreciate what I have here a little more. I feel less pressure to “hustle”, “grind”, or rapidly grow and expand my business - something which has led me to spend quite a bit of money on business coaching and programs in the past. This has also helped me to feel into how I want to run my business and what feels right for me without the influence of anyone else. I didn’t realize how influenced I was, until I took a break. What we often think are independent decisions, preferences and interests are often influenced by something we saw someone else do, try or buy online.

I find I take far fewer selfies, and more photos of moments I want to remember, or simply try to be present and take a photo in my memory.

The most unexpected observation is that

I’ve also become hyper-aware of phone use of those around me. I will admit that sometimes I have a bit of a superiority complex about it, but on the whole I feel sad.

• I feel sad that even when in the same room as others, they are glued to their phone.

• Feeling sad about their addiction and need to escape some unknown pain.

• Feeling sad about the devolving attention span of the young children I teach.

• And feeling sad that we aren’t connecting.

It often seems to me like we have been robbed of the interaction, of the beauty and awkwardness of being human. The awkwardness of sitting uncomfortably in a room and staring at the walls is no longer a thing because everyone is on their phone. (Perhaps you don’t miss this). Or the beauty of striking up a conversation with a stranger. This has largely been lost. Even when I walk the dog and forget my phone at home, I often can’t even make eye contact with someone to ask them the time because they are glued to their phone.
What are we sacrificing in order to exist with minimal discomfort?
What experiences are no longer available to us?
What happens to a mind that is never bored, or allowed to wander aimlessly, to have downtime without constant stimulation?
What happens to us collectively if we are no longer connecting in the same way?

I can answer some of these questions through my own personal experience and in what I have observed in hundred, even thousands of children I have worked with. The restlessness, the lack of social skills, the inability to focus (ADD and ADHD levels are on the rise), the difficulty sleeping or “turning off”, and so much more. A lack of creativity is one thing that also saddens me. There’s no need to create when you can simply follow something you see online. There’s so little resilience because there exists so little friction in our daily life. A screen not loading fast enough is sometimes all it takes to drive a student to overwhelming frustration. How will they cope with the inevitable difficulties of life? (Maybe those uncomfortable situations we now lack because we can simply reach for our phone were the things teaching us how to deal with uncomfortable emotions and situations?)

How much social media am I using now?

I found initially that I was either an all-in or all-out approach to me. Either I cut out all social media or felt addicted to it. Currently, I haven’t deleted any accounts. I no longer have them on my phone and I remain logged out on all of my devices. I find that even the simple act of being prompted to log in, makes me more mindful of why I am headed to the site. Most of these apps/sites also restrict content unless you are logged in, so even if I stumble onto an instagram page of a business or celebrity that I’m looking up, I only see a few posts before instagram cuts off access unless I sign in. Then I click off.

Presently, I don’t really need to delete or take extreme measures to avoid these sites because I genuinely don’t have a desire to spend much time on them. I realize this could change if I were to start using them heavily again. I had a period after returning from my 4 month break from social media where my use had spiked so I had to cut it back again. If I do have the apps on my phone, I will find myself mindlessly scrolling more. But even then, I don’t feel the same thrill as before. I think there are two reasons for this:

1. I stopped posting “content” so the thrill of seeing if someone liked, shared, commented on it, isn’t there. This dopamine spike often kept me coming back again and again to check my phone. (I do experience something similar here on substack but get emails for these updates so I can avoid the app until I get a notification in my inbox).

2. Once I started to fill the time that used to be for scrolling with more meaningful activities (like I mentioned earlier, whether that be working on my business, a new hobby or connecting with loved ones, taking rest etc) the “content” on social media began to feel boring. It also began to feel like I was having a million different opinions constantly yelled at me. It was too loud. So even when I went on IG, for example, and checked out a couple reels, I often would only watch a handful before getting bored or noticing emotions and sensations I didn’t want to feel. Then I would get off the app/site and go back to something that I actually enjoyed. Because most of the content served up to me by the algorithm isn’t actually that interesting to me.

I still feel the urge to go online

particularly when I’m tired. But when I get home from a day of teaching and I’m overstimulated, the last thing I want to do is continue to stimulate myself. I’d rather sit in silence, drink a tea, read a book, take a walk or lay in bed for a bit.

I’m better able to separate myself from this urge and to simply observe it and let it pass. Plus, I have certain safeguards in place, like taking the apps off of my phone and remaining logged out, so that when the urge surfaces I’ve created distance and measures to help me avoid temptation in the moment.

For a few weeks, my use of notes here on Substack increased as I was looking for community and to share and transferred that urge from one social media space to another. I have curbed that as well. I subscribe to certain publications and engage with their writing rather than their notes, for instance.

Am I missing anything?

I’ve talked about before, how I sometimes felt I was missing out because so many conversations are about sharing what you saw or heard online.

There are undoubtedly some benefits to being online too, like finding new recipes, connecting with people you never would have met except for social media etc.

Overall, the benefits do not even compare to the improvement I feel in my mental health from minimizing my social media usage. If I want to find a recipe, I’ll go to YouTube. If I want community, well I’m working on building that both in my own corner of the internet (hello wonderful members of TBS, and if you’re not a member, why not subscribe) and out here in the real world.

In conclusion

I have not entirely gotten offline, as I thought I would. My life has not been completely transformed and taken a 180, but it does feel more like my life. I feel more myself and like I am taking actions and making decisions for myself, and not for how it will look to others on the internet. Whether that shows up as simply enjoying a moment without interruption to take a photo to share to a story, or allowing myself to try something without needing to tell others immediately about it. I feel that I have created more space for myself. More space to try, to fail, to grow, to regress, to think, to reflect and to simply exist as I am. I have noticed my mental health is better and my sense of who I am.

Join us for a group space session here and use the power of your breath to reconnect more deeply with yourself.