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Reannon's avatar

I have had problems with social media since 2015. Since then, every December I would delete my socials for the whole month, sometimes up to the middle of January. I needed that time to have more headspace & be in the moment. That first year, I deleted Facebook entirely & didn’t go back on until last year. Why did I go back to Facebook? I finally got sick of being the odd one out within my kids school & sporting groups. I missed SO much information by not being in the groups. So now I’m there for those groups plus after my daughters autism diagnosis I found some really helpful online groups too so that’s it. Occasionally I post a photo of the kids because all my relatives live across the country from us but that’s it.

As for Instagram, it’s been a different situation. I think I’ve deleted my entire account 3 or 4 times. Sometimes for 6 months & other times as long as 18 months. But something always draws me back.

I went back a few months ago after not using Instagram for over 12 months & I finally figured out a way to make it work for me. I don’t follow anyone I know in real life. I don’t follow people I used to think of as “online friends”. I only post about the food I make & the books I read which means little back & forth commenting on my own posts. I only follow food accounts, podcasters or authors I like, accounts related to autism, ARFID, anti diet & a few mid size/plus size fashion accounts. I think it’s just over 100 accounts. This seems to work for me because I don’t have anyone to compare myself to & I don’t feel the need to comment as often because of these accounts are huge, they don’t feel personal so a comment here or there & a like feels like enough. I’m there for information, recipe gathering & to look at delicious food.

I don’t see Instagram as an extension of myself any more, a way to show the world who I am. It’s just those two things, cooking & reading, that I want to talk about & even then I do it in such a matter of fact way. It’s not like I used to do in the past where so many of my post were like a personal diary or therapy session. I don’t share personal stuff, my family or my daily life like I once did. And that is good for me. After 16 years of using social media, I think I have figured out a way where it doesn’t make me feel like shit.

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Candice's avatar

Late last year I deleted my Instagram completely because I was sick of wasting hours watching multiple versions of the same reels and mindlessly scrolling. l deactivated Facebook too, only keeping it because my workplace has their Manager's chat on a Messenger group. A couple of months ago I got sick of the Managers Chat being something that could take up headspace when I wasn't there so I completely deleted Facebook too and told them to just communicate to me in person when I'm physically at work.

My motivation is that I moved 3000km from where I grew up in 2020 and felt this obligation to post about what I'm doing in my life, only for people to comment on my photos about how jealous they are, because my new home is a tourist town that happens to sit between the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, so it's very pretty and warm compared to Melbourne. I also switched from corporate tech sales to hospitality so a lot of people fundamentally couldn't grasp me jumping off the capitalism bandwagon and openly judged me for it. A few friends turned to using their social media for negativity and trauma dumping and after unfollowing a lot of that it didn't really leave much. For the people who supported me and vice versa, we keep in touch by SMS and phonecalls, and for the rest, well, life moves on.

My partner has a facebook account that he never posts on that he uses purely to see announcements for band tours or festivals and I am signed up to email newsletters for those things, so I don't feel like I miss out on anything by not having it. We've been back to Melbourne a couple of times for weddings since then and it was really nice not posting and getting the "oh you're here! You didn't tell me! We need to catch up!" routine, purely because it's convenient for them that I'm there. We could be a lot more intentional about what we did and who we made plans with, which is really nice.

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