My break up with social media
In 2020 I began what I call my break up with social media. In 2021 there was a day when my break up with social media came down to clicking the delete buttons – if I could find them! I persevered, and I did find the right buttons. I pressed delete and exited from Facebook and Instagram for ethical and safety reasons: about women, children, and challenging the norm.
Women
For some time, I had listened to women of every age share how social media stir up emotions of anxiety, depression, overwhelm, low self-worth, comparison, not feeling good enough, loss of self-confidence, lack, a failure.
Women I was coaching were finding that they got stuck in comparing themselves and their lives with others – personally and in their business – and that froze them into inaction. Many others were beginning to label themselves as having social anxiety.
How come they kept scrolling then?
How come they gathered up the courage to delete the app from their phone, for a week or two, look up, breathe a little easier, start to find some fun and start to feel great, then got sucked back in?
What caused them to soon be back scrolling from their first visit to the loo in the morning until lights out at night?
Children
Around the same time I’d watched the 7.30 report (I’ll share the link below) featuring Task Force Argos. In collaboration with overseas police agencies, they’d rescued thousands of children from abusers in their war against online child exploitation.
Then I found the documentary The Children in the Pictures that is worth watching to understand more.
In 2021, Facebook stated that they employ 40,000 people globally to work on safety and security and that they’d spent $13 billion in that area since 2016. Doing the maths, employing 40,000 people globally to work on safety and security wouldn’t be one Facebook staff member to every pedophile now would it? That means there are a huge number of pedophiles out there. Who is watching the children through their webcams, games and apps!
It’s a very scary big problem, and our kids are at risk. Even more so today.
It is often shared that the children, once caught up in the web, were shamed into not telling anyone. I have witnessed how that silence has led to tragedy and a life lost within our extended family.
Me
In 2020, I had watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”. (LINK to YouTube trailer) In this documentary tech experts from Silicon Valley sounded the alarm on the dangerous impact of social networking, which Big Tech use in an attempt to manipulate and influence.
It set off my internal safety alarms that what was happening on social media wasn’t right and was going way too fast, beyond the majority of society’s understanding. Yet it understands us all far too well.
As a coach of women at that time, I sat with personal questions to consider:
- Do I stick with my marketing plan and continue to post positive, inspiring, educational and entertaining material? That was my focus, it’s educational, uplifting, healthy, yet I felt unsafe! I don’t know what this machine is doing and how it thinks.
- Do I step away, take some time to observe what’s going on from the outside, not from the inside, of the chaos that was social media?
For a short while I stayed, because I felt it was business suicide to leave!
I still wondered, was I contributing to the problem? Could I do something different and see where that leads me? Was I feeding a machine that I didn’t fully understand?
If it wasn’t in alignment with who I was; and how I wanted to live my life; nor how I wanted to run my business, wasn’t it Ok to break the cycle someplace? It wasn’t even a forever consideration. It was something I needed to test out for myself to find some blue sky again and look at alternatives available to me.
In any situation, only we can choose where to go from here. No one else has that responsibility for us as adults. Only we have control or influence over our own personal choices and the way forward.
That was when I came across the 7.30 report featuring ARGOS in early October 2021 (LINK to YouTube).
The straw that broke the camel’s back, as the saying goes, was watching The Children in the Pictures (LINK to YouTube Trailer). I haven’t shared a link to where you can stream the full show – I know it’s available on various channels.
I decided that DELETE was the right button for me to push concerning social media.
One day I might restart, but I needed to make a clean break at that time.
I just needed to find and then hit the DELETE buttons!
On 20th October 2021, after posting a 4-day farewell post to my friends, family and business page followers, I deleted my personal and business accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
It wasn’t easy in my mind, which intrigued me.
- I had to contemplate every connection, the worthwhile business groups, and events that I was now not going to see posted by those who communicate only on Facebook.
- How would I keep consistent communication with those that matter, not just give a tap and a red love heart emoji?
- I’d be missing daily Instagram stories about what good stuff was going on.. sunshiney-life stuff, never the normal stuff, of course?
- Then there were all those photos I’d put into albums of our trips, anniversaries, loved ones since past. There were weddings and family gatherings over the years that I enjoyed seeing pop up as memories – they’ll be gone! How can I do it!!
Memories are within us, and photos, well they are still on my phone and in the backup drive. Breathe…
Alongside of all this thinking was my memoir writing, I was quietly plugging away at in the background.
I was only midway on that writing journey. Rattled with dark memories and emotions, the web and social media felt like a spider’s web!
I knew from the checklists at Hay House Writer’s Community that it was important to build a social media presence, get a maillist, all of that. But my hypervigilance and feeling unsafe were setting off little alarm bells in my mind and body. Now that I look back at it, and my reasonings for the exit, what I was listening to from other women about their feelings in social media, it wasn’t just about them, it was also about me!
If it feels unsafe, it’s unsafe. It’s OK to say ‘no more’ and leave.
The social media machine does not make leaving a simple-step out the door.
Choices were:
Facebook deactivate or delete.
- If deactivating, you will still have messenger.
- You can keep your messenger and you can reactivate when you feel ready for more.
- Deactivating keeps us still in the system.
- So, to delete, completely eliminates the account and messenger.
- Facebook has a delete button in the settings section, and it was deleted immediately once pressed.
Instagram to the naked eye gives you the option to temporarily deactivate your account within the edit profile section. Not delete.
- I deactivated the account.
- A login screen popped up. I thought is there a next step and clicked that. It told me ‘welcome back’.
- I attempted to deactivate again and received the message it is only possible to deactivate once in a 7 day period. Try again in a few days. Oh FFS!
- I found a very helpful article via Business Insider. However as the web goes, that article is now no longer available for me to share the link for you. The Article gives me a 404 Not Found page, but back then, it was called “How to Delete Instagram Account?” It took me to the Instagram deletion menu.
I deleted my accounts. I also deleted my Pinterest and Twitter accounts – they made it easy.
Personal Improvement is possible only through our capacity to reflect, with honesty. To do that, we all know there are better questions we need to ask.
Here are some questions you might like to contemplate, or use as an internal audit, with your mind and heart:
- What principles or values do social media not meet for you personally?
- What does social media give you – whether good or bad, it gives you something to keep going back?
- How do you communicate most often: verbally, written sentences, memes, emojis?
- Do you contribute or do you just look and not connect with people you are connected to?
- Do you believe you have social anxiety? What’s caused it?
- When was the last time you rang someone to wish them a happy birthday?
- What other avenues are fun ways to re-establish authentic connection with family, friends, community?
- What emotions are you numbing that you want to numb by scrolling?
- What does the idea of deleting, not deactivating, your social media profiles raise for you?
- What would you miss out on?
- How could you make sure you don’t miss out on an event, birthday etc?
- What would you find that’s nourishing, soul-satisfying, better connection instead?
- How many times per day do you click onto them?
- How long do you spend in there?
Business Owner related:
- Where else would you do business if social media fell apart, got taken down, no longer existed?
- As a business owner, how much time are you distracted by what to post next on social media? Do you wonder how your current post is going, and what others are posting? How much Return On Investment (ROI) do you get on the time spent contemplating social media as part of your business? You’d need to know the value of your hourly rate as the business owner to work that out.
- As a business owner, what other avenues do you use that gives you income already?
- Where did your current or past customers come to you from?
Answering even a few of those, what would be the chance now that you would investigate the impact of social media on your life and business?
Would you comfortably go and tell your friends and family that you’re deleting your accounts? If they questioned your decision, what reasons would you share, if you felt you needed to? Would having a script ready help you? I know as a survivor that thinking out what it is you want to say can sometimes be powerful. Reaffirming your reasoning in your heart before saying the words out loud is looking after yourself first.
If you’re a survivor still working through healing, do you feel better or worse when you’ve scrolled through social media?
My thoughts now on social media, since I’ve released my book, and re-entered the social platforms in 2023:
- Some people’s posts are powerfully validating eg. Nate Postlethwaite writes with a kind and compassionate heart. So I’m not judging here. I appreciate people like Nate.
- Since I’ve finished writing, and have done a hell of a lot of healing, I don’t get caught in anything that doesn’t serve me.
- To market Resolve, the place I do post about the book, and the behind-the-scenes is on Instagram.
- I still don’t have a good feeling about Facebook. I go there once or twice a week because the Peer Support Groups are only available through Facebook. I don’t have a business page for Resolve, only a personal profile, it’s clunky to share between Instagram and Facebook. My Facebook is very light on for content!
- On Instagram I follow and connect with people who are sharing from a level of love, professionalism and empathy. Social workers, psychologists, educators, authors, organisations that support survivors, other survivors. Some survivors I know are there, they don’t share, but I know they’re there.
- I communicate with fellow advocates. I am interested in whatever research is being shared, if papers are shared there – that’s more often shared on LinkedIn.
- I wonder at the people who still share garbage, empty content: why do they do that? Now there’s TikTok. Both of these make me anxious because they have me wondering at the human mind.
- I consciously choose what I share on my book’s profile. I know from all I read in my research for Resolve what gave me goosebumps, and epiphanies. If it resonated with me or helped me take a step forward, it was poured into Resolve’s pages. So I will share snippets of that out on social media. I only share if it feels worthy of sharing. I don’t pre-schedule nor adhere to the rules of algorhythms. I delete posts after a while. There is no rule about posting and it must remain there for eternity! There’s enough, more important things, to be concerned about in the world!
For me, during the time of my break up with social media, I personally didn’t miss a thing by deleting those accounts. If I’d deactivated them I feel that was making a 50/50 decision. I won back time and concentration to reconnect with alternative and traditional ways to authentically show up for my business. My healing and book writing was prioritised. Living authentic to my core values was more fulfilling than conforming or following the crowd, blindly, as it felt it had become back then.
I am very grateful to have given myself that gift of choice, when I personally needed to make a change.
It didn’t break me. It was good, healthy and I’m thoroughly ready to bring my good work to the world, on my terms.
Please don’t hesitate to share this post.
Shared with love,
Alice
Resolve: A Story of Courage, Healthy Inquiry and Recovery from Sibling Sexual Abuse is now available globally. Libraries and bookstores can order copies. Please follow me on Instagram and Facebook. The audiobook is now also available via over 50 audiobook sites.
