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At 13, I got my first Twitter account. Young and starry-eyed, it was my first footprint on the digital world. A way to announce, "Yes, I exist, and this is who I am".

 

At 14, I was using Facebook to connect with kids from my high school. I begged my mom for weeks to let me have one, all the cool kids did. It was a race to get home and post a status about your day; I would message friends all night long. Not having a Facebook was social suicide.

 

At 15, I created my first Instagram account. I had just gotten my first iPhone weeks before, and my best friend encouraged me to check out this cool new app where I could post photos.

 

Now, I’m 21.

 

I have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, and previously had (before its demise) a Vine.

 

I can’t even remember all the logins to these accounts (who can?), but my Apple iCloud account remembers them. I can’t vividly remember life before social media. Perhaps, because memories exist in the mind like blurry images. Digital memories are sharp and precise. I know I used to a have a slew of my childhood friends’ home phone numbers memorized to call them up in the evenings; now I can just text my friends without thinking about their numbers. The only number I know by heart is my mother's. Four, one, two, three, seven...

 

I can also tell you I’ve deleted my Twitter account 3 times, my Instagram account 3 times, and even my Facebook once. And many times, the deletion process wasn’t permanent, because they know you’d come crawling back in a few days, begging to log in to sneak a peak of your timeline. This is all before you hesitantly delete your account again. "C'mon, it's just a social media cleanse, how hard can it be?" you ask yourself. Fact: Instagram doesn’t even delete accounts, you can only ‘temporarily disable’ it. Twitter and Facebook both have an extended timeline where it can take months of inactivity to actually delete your account.

 

Genuinely, in all honestly, deleting my Twitter made me a happier person. I only created a new account at the request of my boyfriend, so he could send me funny tweets. I also figured it would be another professional landscape that I should have a presence on. Besides that, I never go onto Twitter, because it is a negative sphere where people feel they can voice any and every opinion they have.

 

“The social contract of the internet seems to insist that there’s a nobility in weathering degradation…Being on Twitter felt like being in a nonconsensual BDSM relationship with the apocalypse. So, I left.” (Lindy West.)

 

I'm not the only one who shares a distaste and a distrust of Twitter. It's been declining in popularity for years. Even as more people begin to realize the negativity Twitter users are prone to, it's still getting worse. “So, we stayed, while Twitter’s endemic racist, sexist and transphobic harassment problems grew increasingly more sophisticated and organized,” writes West.

 

I lived without Twitter for over 2 years, that’s well over 700 days, or 17,520 hours. Multiple studies have tracked social media usage; the average person has 5 social media accounts and spends an hour and 40 minutes on social media every day (Davidson). That’s roughly 20 minutes a day that users spend on average on Twitter. I crunched some numbers and... that's over 200 hours or 8 entire days I got back of my life when I deleted Twitter.

 

While deleting Twitter let me escape never-ending negativity, deleting Instagram gave me a chance to see myself as something other than a number. The month I lived without Instagram gave me time to reconnect with my values, my friends, and taught me to accept myself again. You probably think I'm joking. What's a month without Instagram going to do? Well, for someone who was literally addicted to Instagram, I like to think of it as a time-out (maybe even rehab). On Instagram, there is no excuse for imperfections. It is a platform purely based on aesthetics alone, and this is the basis for any judgment of a user’s account or photo. A recent study showed Instagram was the worst account for mental health. It was “associated with high levels of anxiety, depression, bullying and FOMO, or the ‘fear of missing out,’” (Macmillan).

 

“Social media posts can also set unrealistic expectations and create feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, the authors wrote. This may explain why Instagram, where personal photos take center stage, received the worst scores for body image and anxiety. As one survey respondent wrote, “Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren’t good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look ‘perfect’.” (Macmillan).

 

Eventually, I did reopen my accounts on all of these platforms, but the time spent without them was invaluable. It let me focus on myself, and give myself time to reconstruct my image of myself.

 

And, when I came back to these accounts I had a new sense of self-worth and confidence.

 

It’s unrealistic to think we can survive (or at least thrive) both personally and professional without social media these days. There are numerous benefits to social media such as self-identity, self-expression, community building and emotional support (Macmillan). But, like all good things, balance is key to using social media in a positive and impactful way. I don’t believe deleting all my social media accounts would make me happier. In fact, I would feel so completely disconnected, that I would be unhappy. Yet, everyone needs a break from the pressures of social media.

 

There's no shame in that. Everyone needs a vacation from work, even if you adore your job. Everyone needs a cheat day on their diet. Everyone needs a lazy Sunday to just stay in bed and watch Netflix.

 

And, in an era of #SelfLove, if deleting your Instagram or Twitter for a week would make you happier, do it.

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Works Cited:

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Davidson, Lauren. “Is Your Daily Social Media Usage Higher than Average?” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 17 May 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11610959/Is-your-daily-social-media-usage-higher-than-average.html.

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Macmillan, Amanda. “Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health.” Time, Time, 25 May 2017, time.com/4793331/instagram-social-media-mental-health/.

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West, Lindy. “I Quit Twitter and It Feels Great.” NY Times, 1 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/quitting-twitter-lindy-west.html?mtrref=undefined&assetType=opinion.

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