This new year, I vowed to make a real change.
Not the temporary kinds of changes and resolutions we promise ourselves we will make happen only to forget about as soon as January is over, but an actual permanent and beneficial change that will help me become the person I have always wanted to be – judgment free. I decided to delete ALL of my social media.
Yup, no more Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is all gone. It may sound crazy, but it was the most freeing thing I have ever done.
In a society like today’s where people depend on and are seemingly addicted to social media, completely detaching from it can seem like an impossible feat. We use it to keep in touch, blog, share exciting experiences with people, make new friends and connections, keep up with fashion trends and the news, and so much more. However, at the same time, I was noticing something that seemingly everyone had in common, and it was troubling me.
As I scrolled through my Instagram feed and looked at everyone’s lives through pictures, it all just seemed so fake. Even on my end. I too was guilty of solely posting photos that made my life look so much more interesting than it actually was. Why? Maybe because I wanted more followers, or for people to approve of me or think I was cool, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that somewhere along the way, I lost sight of what was actually important in life. And maybe everyone else has too, but they fail to realize.
I was tired of searching for approval in others. I was tired of equating my self-worth to the number of likes I got on a post. I was tired of seeing people who claimed to be friends with me exclude me. I was tired of the inauthenticity of everyone on the internet and tired of letting it affect me and interfere with my life. I was especially tired of the ridiculous amount of time being wasted scrolling through other people’s lives when I could instead be active in my own and be doing something productive. I had absolutely had enough.
It was time to put my foot down and cut all this negativity out of my life, and that is exactly what I did.
It has been a little over a month since I deleted everything and my productivity and confidence in myself has improved faster than ever before. Gone are the days where I waste my precious time, because life is already too short. I no longer think about what my Instagram followers would like or what would make a good picture; I only think about what I would like.
I don’t feel that I need to look a certain way, and I don’t look to anyone for approval. What other people are doing or eating or where they are going is none of my concern. Everything in my life feels so much more authentic and genuine, and I have truly never been happier with who I am and where I am going. As far as keeping in touch with friends, my closest friends still send a text here and there, and I check up on them, and we get to spend time together and make memories without having our noses in our phones, which is an AMAZING experience.
And they don’t need a Facebook notification to remember my birthday, either.