Like all of us, I have my struggles with social media. The Facebooks, Instagrams, Twitter, and everything in between and/or related. A few years ago, I had it with Facebook, closed my account, and haven’t looked back ever since. I do still have my Instagram account though. Under the pretext that it is the less Facebooky way to keep in touch with friends. Which is utterly bullshit if you think about it, is still Facebook just with a different coat of paint. For the past few months, I have gone back and forth as to whether close it or keep it. I went through and unfollowed a bunch of accounts, just to keep it minimal and more manageable, that instant gratification has vanished. It didn’t fix the anxiety of having an Instagram account even by unfollowing others.
Today I have deleted the Instagram app off my device as an experiment, although, I kind of already know how’s going to end up. Like on other occasions I will find myself missing something to scroll through and will re-download the app.
Twitter, well, that is a different animal. I say to myself that I am okay with it. Twitter can be okay sometimes. I have been following a lot of accounts of pixel art artists, Indie games developers, and such. And so, most of my timeline is full of pixels and awesome art. But as we all know, doom scrolling is a thing. At some point, the pixels go away and all the shit that gives me anxiety or causes me to tighten and lock my jaw starts to pop-up. In other words, even Twitter is giving me anxiety nowadays, especially since the election. I thought it’d be all done after the election but as we all know, that is not the case.
I want to do the best I can to stay away from these two, although, I don’t think I will allow myself to delete all my Twitter apps off my phone, the same way I deleted the Instagram app.
This is an eternal struggle, and I hate it. I grew up not having any of these outlets and I was fine and happy. Ironically, as much anxiety these give me, wonder if I could be happy without them again…
