03.31.2024

30 Days of
Social Media Sobriety

Yesterday I reached a 30-day benchmark of social media sobriety.

Social media use began in my early twenties with platforms like Friendster and MySpace. Back then, access was limited to web browsers, necessitating a personal computer and a stable internet connection. You had to be at home or wait until returning home to engage with these platforms. Initially, I used social media to stay connected with friends and colleagues, sharing photos, planning gatherings, and exploring art, design, and music. Any political content in my social feed leaned toward the liberal end of the spectrum, reflecting the demographic of early adopters.

It was FUN. I typically left my feed feeling good, inspired even.

As technology evolved with the release of the iPhone, social media became portable, enabling real-time engagement from anywhere. Instagram became my favorite app, and while my usage increased social media remained a platform for discovering art, design, and music, as well as sharing experimental media, thought-provoking ideas, and pictures of food.

Like the previous gen-X internet pioneers, millennials were figuring out how to use this tech to pull themselves out of an economic hellscape. Social media marketing created jobs for a demographic of young people who entered the economy at one of the worst points in financial history. The influencer era emerged, offering avenues for self-publishing and crowdfunding-supported ventures. Content became globally commodifiable.

Social media also became a powerful tool for political organizing, as seen in the Arab Uprising of 2010. It facilitated the communication of events to a global audience and made street journalists viable competitors to mainstream media. Unless their internet service was disabled.

The content I generated and shared was an earnest cataloging of my own life and experiences, design work, and ideas. My feed was maturing, and twenty-something exploits were replaced with engagements, wedding photos, pregnancy announcements, and professional milestones. I was also staying socially/politically informed through the channels of BLM founders, global news sources, and political accounts I had chosen to follow.

In 2016 I decided to quit Facebook cold turkey after my boomer parents and all of their friends had figured out how to use the platform and ruined the party. This cultural shift caused a mass exodus remarkable enough for someone to manufacture “Make Facebook Great Again” hats.

Instagram remained a place of solidarity, connecting me with a community of folks with shared interests at the intersection of design, education, and social justice. I found myself feeling less lonely, and deeply inspired througuh our interactions.

There have been times in my social media life that were far less rosy though.

When I experienced pregnancy loss in 2013 the tidal wave of grief was compounded by the stream of pregnancy announcements in my feed, and I felt that this was something I couldn’t talk about in that space. There were no hearts, hugs, tears, or angry faces to click in support of friends going through a difficult time. Facebook didn’t add these features until 2016, after Mark Zuckerberg and his wife experienced their own difficulties with fertility and pregnancy loss.

Later I had an experience with a person that creeped me out so badly that I made my primary account private and created a public-facing account where I did not post photos of my home or my children, or real-time whereabouts.

Finally in late 2019, when my marriage imploded, I discovered that folks were nosing their way through my feed to try and fill the gaps in the chismé. I felt like a walking telenovela. I stripped my public content down to just a handful of design-related images and stopped posting original content regularly for almost three years. While me and my marriage are healthier I have not returned to posting the way I used to.

This brings us to my current day relationship with IG, where I’m more of a passive user. I scroll, I re-post, and send friendly Dms. However I've noticed a marked uptick in feelings of anxiety and desperation after using the ‘gram. My current algorithm seems to be: “This is what people like you are doom spiraling about —we think you’ll freak out too!” Our cultural zeitgeist is still working through the grief brought on by the pandemic. There is frustration at the slowing momentum of social justice movements, and anxiety over the rise of alt-right politics. Oh yeah, we also wrecked the planet, and we're most likely 40 years past the turning point. Mix all of that with the fact that America has drained the joy out of life by politicizing dumb stuff like pop stars and proven centuries-old medical science. 😑 Rome is burning, and social media makes me feel like all I can do is watch.

The most morally troubling bits of content for me are not legitimate pieces of street journalism or calls to action—it’s the endless amount of people streaming their trauma responses into their phone cams—most of whom I don’t remember following and have never had any type of direct interaction with. While I am sure there is some real catharsis in stream-valving your hard feelings into the social media ether, I am also sure that being on the receiving end of all of that activated trauma is not good for the amygdala. In a single IG session, I’ve witnessed innocent people die, mothers wailing in grief, a person yelling “It’s not that complicated” into the camera, and somewhere after that a chubby puppy is sleeping peacefully on his back.

I can feel myself disassociating amid the confusion I have created for the primal part of my brain designed to figure out how to stay alive for another day. I believe that bearing witness to the suffering of others and holding space for each other is an essential part of the ecosystem of healing—but our brains were not designed to bear witness to this much chaos.

At first, I felt guilty for leaving. I felt like I was turning away, but something in me said “Fuck that. Do it.” and I decided to check in with my privilege offline.

Over the last 30 days, my mind has become a much more peaceful and hopeful space. I’ve used this time to reflect on the organic vs. engineered aspect of “community” and what it means to be a citizen for the greater good vs. slipping into artificially induced martyr syndrome. In my community, my people know that if they need to pull up on my couch and pour their hearts out until the early hours—I’m here to offer them a plática. If they need help, I am here, with an ofrenda. I take care of the people I know and love, and they have taken care of me. In the local and immediate sense, that is what is tangible. In a global sense, I’ve always held myself accountable for staying informed and sought out the practical actions my privilege affords me to influence change.

I’ve also reminded myself that Instagram is a business that runs on paid ads. They’ve been caught red-handed as a bad actor when it comes to knowingly damaging the mental health of their users in the name of profit. Their goal in all of this, is to navigate my burning Amygdala toward click-through ads promising to sell me wellness in the form of recycled yoga leggings, video meditations with celebrities, and subscribing to empowerment courses with güerita self-care coaches. What?! No.

I’ve spent more time studying Spanish, and I’ve been able to converse with my 84-year-old Nana at deeper levels. She so funny! My daughter was so excited watching me use the Duolingo app to learn Spanish, that she asked to have the app installed on her device too—now we’re learning together. I’ve finished two of the seven books I’ve been reading and started a couple more. I’ve read essays and articles written by experts, and I’ve had conversations with people way smarter than me about how we keep moving forward. I’ve also slept better and I’ve been able to give calm and clear attention to the present.

Does this mean I will never return to social media? Nope. However, I will be practicing better social media harm-reduction strategies. I miss connecting with my design friends who are spread out across the globe, and I feel like I want to share more of my creative work again. I’ve installed daily time limits, and I am scrubbing my “follows” clean of celebrities, and people whose names I cannot put a face to, and will be thoughtfully focusing on engaging with the people and content that inspires me to keep making art, and writing and being a joyful advocate for justice online and off.