Social media. It’s good. It’s bad. It allows me to keep up with everything going on and connects me with people I never would have otherwise connected with. It also causes me to dislike people and generally makes me feel worse. This is the love-hate relationship I have with social media in a nutshell, and lately, it’s been a lot more hate than love. I struggle with anxiety and loneliness, and I can sometimes be kind of neurotic (ok very neurotic); social media doesn’t tend to help with that. A few months ago, my anxiety reached a point where it became too much for me, and I had to make some changes in my life. One of those changes was getting off social media. In the months since, point blank: I haven’t missed it at all. In the process of detoxing, I have also slowly become aware of how destructively I had been using it, and how it ultimately did me far more harm than good.

Now, before I go into about all the reasons why social media is awful, I want to emphasize that there is a lot of good that comes from it, and I totally understand why people are on it and use it. My goal here is not to shame anyone for using social media; after all, prior to my recent hiatus, I literally spent the last decade of my life on social media, uninterrupted. So I get it. One of the things that I hate about social media is how much it oversimplifies. Everything on social media is binary: either good or bad, black or white, and that’s not how life is. Things are so much more complex and nuanced than that, and we lose so much by not seeing the shades of gray. So in the spirit of nuance, here are some good things about social media:

It can be a lot of fun: the memes are great, and I do miss NBA Twitter.
It’s an easy way to keep up with what’s going on: it’s how I kept up with my friends, politics, sports, pop culture, and other things that were happening throughout the world.
It democratizes information: there are so many incredible books, articles, podcasts, pieces of writing, art, and people that I’ve come across and learned so much from through exposure via social media, and I am a smarter and more well-rounded person because of it.
Best for last: it provides the opportunity to connect with and get to know people one would have likely never otherwise connected with, and I am so thankful to have met so many incredibly people via social media and have them as a part of my life. A couple of friends that I met online were actually the ones who provided me the encouragement and support that I needed to initially seek help for my anxiety and go see a therapist, and for that, I am forever grateful.

In small doses, social media can be pretty great. The problem is, we aren’t getting small doses; we’re drinking out of a fire hose.

A good rule to generally follow in a capitalistic society is that if something is free, then you are the product. This could not be any more true for social media. We are the product; more specifically, our attention and data is the product. Think about how social media companies make money: through advertisements. Why do companies advertise on social media? Because social media companies have all this data on us, and they can use that data to send us very specific, targeted ads that we are more likely to click on. So social media companies make money off of our data by advertising to us, and the more time we spend on social media, the more data they collect on us, and the more ads that we see. Do you see the problem here?

Ever open Instagram, mindlessly scroll through it, exit out of it, and then literally immediately open it up again and do the same thing? That’s not an accident; that’s by design. The brain that we have now is the same brain we had during the time of hunter-gatherers, where anxiety, fear, loneliness, attention, etc. had specific purposes that were useful to alerting us to danger, which was super important, because danger at that time meant the difference between life or death. We don’t live in those times anymore, yet society has changed way way faster than evolution. So we’re running society software version 2019 on evolution brain hardware version 1, and social media companies take advantage of that to screw with our heads. They’re not going to promote showing the pictures of your cousin’s baby, because that’s not going to hold your attention for all that long. Instead, they’re going for the cheap thrills: the Twitter fights, the provocative Instagram photos, and the outrageous Facebook videos of people doing awful things, because those are the things that activate the lizard brain and keep us coming back. Those are also the things that make us feel worse every time we see them: they cause us to compare the highlights of other peoples’ lives to our lowlights, to see the world as a dark, terrible place where everyone is out to get us, and generally make us feel like we are inadequate, worthless, and misunderstood.

So let’s walk through an example of how this plays out: I am sitting around alone on a Friday night feeling bored and a little lonely. I open up Instagram and scroll through. I see all these people who seem to be happy and having a great time, and I wonder what’s wrong with me for not doing anything or having fun. I close Instagram and open Twitter. At this point, I’m feeling a little more lonely and a little more sensitive. I see a joke posted by someone on Twitter. Ordinarily, regardless of my opinion of the joke, I wouldn’t think much of it or pass any judgment, but I’m feeling sad and emotional right now, and I’m not really in the mood for jokes. It’s also Twitter where there’s no context for anything, and in my emotional state, this joke without any context comes off as insensitive, and as a result, I like this person a little less and feel a little more misunderstood. Same thing happens when I see another tweet that is meant to be funny or amusing, but given how I’m feeling, it comes off as petty, and at this point, I feel so very alone and completely misunderstood. I briefly consider reaching out to someone, but everyone’s having fun on a Friday night, and I don’t want to be a buzzkill and bring anyone down with my feelings. Besides, nobody would really understand how I’m feeling anyway. So instead, I post a cryptic tweet that’s really a cry for help; I want nothing more than for someone to see it and reach out, but I can’t ask for help directly, because I don’t want to be a burden, and I don’t feel I can handle any sort of rejection from anyone at this point. Desperately in need of any kind of positive feelings or validation at this point, I go back to Instagram and post a picture I wouldn’t ordinarily post. Whatever high that comes from that though is fleeting, and the likes never feel like they are enough or from the right people. Finally, I toss my phone across the room, at this point feeling like a completely broken person and asking myself what the hell is wrong with me.

Reading that back, I feel embarrassed and pathetic: embarrassed that I allow social media to affect me in this way, and pathetic for even having these thoughts and feelings in the first place. I share it in spite of that embarrassment because I have a hunch that I’m far from the only person who goes through this cycle, and I think that embarrassment and shame is what causes us to suffer alone rather than talk about it. The reason I would go on social media as much as I did was to find something that would make me feel less lonely and more fulfilled, and instead I’d find myself feeling even more alone and inadequate. Here’s the thing though: there’s nothing embarrassing about succumbing to what these multi-billion dollar tech companies are trying to do to us, and there’s nothing even remotely shameful or pathetic in wanting and searching for a feeling of connection and fulfillment. If we’re honest with ourselves, I think we all want that. My goal in sharing this is to try to destigmatize the idea that these feelings and vicious cycles we go through are something we should be ashamed of, or that we’re the only ones who go through them. What I want more than anything else is for us to be honest with each other about what we feel and ultimately what we need, so that we can seek something better.

What that something better is, I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that out. What I would love is to be able to talk about this all more openly and honestly so that I don’t have to try to figure it out alone. I don’t claim to have any answers, but I am pretty certain that isolating myself isn’t it, nor is putting out cryptic cries for help on social media. I may not be getting what I need from social media, but what is it exactly that I need, and what can I do to get it? I legitimately don’t know, but I would love some help in figuring that out, because frankly, I’m tired of trying to figure it out on my own. As introverted and reserved as I can be, I do have this fundamentally deep desire to want to connect with people, and the inability to do so as much as I’d like is what I think brings me that loneliness. I think we all have that desire to feel accepted and seen, even those of us who love our alone time and sometimes claim to be antisocial. After all, when you think back to your favorites memories or the most important moments in your life… were you alone?

P.S.
When I first set out to write this, the idea was to do an in-depth analysis into all the subtle and devious ways social media affects us negatively both as individuals and more largely as a society. Once I started writing though, I ended up in a far more intimate and personal place than I was expecting to. I think that’s largely because loneliness has been on my mind a lot lately as it’s gotten colder and darker; not only why we feel lonely, but even more basic questions, like what it actually is and where it even comes from, to the biggest questions like what do we do about it and how do we not feel lonely?

For those who have ever felt lonely (who hasn’t?), I cannot recommend this podcast enough. I’ve listened to A LOT of podcasts, and this might be my favorite one ever. Never have I felt more seen, validated, and understood by a conversation I wasn’t a part of, and I came away from it feeling so much better than I did going in. Normally, I’d highlight some main sections for people to listen to just because the podcast is so long, but there’s honestly so many incredible gems of insight and wisdom in there that it’s too difficult to narrow it down to a few. I promise it’s very very much worth your time.

Also, I came across this little blurb during my research, and I thought it was worth sharing and a good place to end on:

“It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

”Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

”Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

”We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”

Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

”We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

”Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There. No more; no less.”