For someone who aspires to have a career in Social Media Marketing, it may seem odd that I find myself often wishing that social media didn’t exist.There is so much good that social media can do for the world, but there is also so much bad. More often than not, I felt as though I was experiencing the bad end of social media over the past year.
This past summer, I was absolutely glued to my phone. Whether it be watching stories on Instagram, taking photos on Snapchat, or scrolling on Tiktok for hours on end, it would be safe to say that I was in a pretty bad place of being addicted to social media. Snapchat, especially, began to take over my world. For someone who already tends to be pretty insecure in friendships, seeing my friends post on their Snapchat stories when they were with each other (or seeing them together on the Snap Maps), really started to get to me.
I found myself checking Snapchat and looking at my friends’ stories way more often than would be considered healthy. I knew I needed to do something about it before it began to take even more of a toll on my mental health.
After hitting a breaking point one night towards the end of August, I decided to delete every social media app that I owned. That lasted… about a week. Basically, I needed to get Instagram back for my job… and that’s when I realized that neither Instagram nor Tiktok was the root of my issues.
I am almost 6 months Snapchat-free, and I genuinely could never imagine myself using the app again. I know that for a lot of people Snapchat is just a fun way to connect with friends, but for me, seeing what my friends were doing every second of the day was just not healthy..and deleting the app has definitely improved my friendships with them.
Put simply, life has overall been… better. It really has been better since I’ve deleted that app and since I’ve stopped spending so much time worrying about what other people are doing, while also not even having the option to see what they’re doing. I’ve stopped focusing on them and I’ve started focusing way more on myself. It sounds a little dramatic, but I truly do feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders since I began my Snapchat cleanse.
If something that used to be fun begins to feel toxic, it is definitely time to make a change for yourself.