I Want To Delete All of My Social Media, But I Can’t.

How we’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

Most mornings when I wake up, I try to wait as long as I can to check the notifications on my phone. There’s a sense of tranquility and peace in feeling disconnected from the world when you don’t check your phone overnight. I try to bask in this moment for as long as I can before reality set its and I have to face the day (and my notifications).

With everything going on in the United States related to the pandemic, everything that we’re so accustomed to doing hands-on and in person is now over a screen, over a Zoom call, or a group chat message. Currently, I am a college student and five out of my six classes are entirely online. In addition, my primary income is from writing on Medium. It is needless to say that a solid 85% of my day is spent in front of my laptop and phone.

But outside of my work and academics, the last thing I want to do after burning myself out all day on screens, is looking at another screen of other people for leisure.

Like millions of other people, I struggle with depression and anxiety. When it comes to our mental health, it’s been proven that social media has a huge effect on our headspace. Whenever I scroll through my Instagram feed, I see friends, coworkers, and classmates living these picturesque lives (even in a pandemic). While I am well aware that social media is only showcasing the high points of someone’s life, it’s still disheartening to look at it.

I’m seeing pictures of these beautiful girls on cute trips and dates with their friends or significant other and they seem as if they are truly just making the absolutely best out of this new normal. While on the other hand, I feel like we’re living in a real world purgatory. The work I do is no longer fulfilling online, I miss seeing people in person outside of my small bubble, and all I want is for something optimistic to come on the news.

Here’s my problem, I need to be on social media to stay afloat in school and work.

I’m in college getting my Bachelor’s degree in Media and Communication. Many of the projects I do involve me closely working with, observing, monitoring, or posting on social media. Furthermore, it’s important to always know what’s going on in the world and they everything is going through the traffic of the internet.

In addition to my schoolwork, there’s the writing I pursue on the side. Medium is technically in and of itself a social media; since I try to engage with other writers. But unfortunately, I still need to rely on the more mainstream platforms like Instagram and Twitter. A lot of my writing ideas are pulled from small aspects of my social media feeds. If I were to suddenly delete all of my social media, my Medium content may take a downward fall since I would have to start finding inspiration and research elsewhere.

Above all of this, I need to stay on social media because I love what I do as a content creator. I love having the ability to put my writing somewhere and have the potential of a large audience reading it. I love keeping up with what's going on around the world and using it to write more and more. I love everything about what I’m studying and what I’m working towards.

As a creator, it’s essential and a huge advantage. As an everyday user, it is detrimental to my happiness.

All in all, my best bet is to strictly use social media for work and networking. When it comes to the time I need to unwind, it should be with my phone off in the other room. This may seem like a hard realization that could also appeal to you because social media was originally constructed to be used for fun. But for me as an individual, social media is for when I’m on the clock in whatever freelance or content creating job I someday want to pursue.