“Hey, can I get your Snapchat? I’ll hit you up later.”
“What’s your Instagram, I can DM you.”
These are sentences I don’t really know how to answer, and they start some serious letdowns, especially for guys that want my socials, because I don’t have social media. I know what you’re thinking, and no I am not some hermit with no friends and no I don’t believe the internet is going to rise against us and take over the world. I simply don’t have them. And no, I didn’t get them and then delete them. I’ve just never had the desire to have social media accounts.
Here’s why.
Every piece of study advice I’ve ever received went something like this: put your phone away, avoid distractions, get in a quiet place, don’t check your socials. Social media and productivity are always linked, and usually negatively. It’s usually assumed that social media gets in the way of getting things done, and usually, I would agree. If you’re scrolling through TikTok instead of doing homework then, yes, social media interferes with productivity. A study published in 2012 found that employees that used social media often were 9% more productive in the workplace. Mostly because using social media encourages collaboration, cooperation, and effective group communication. But for all that good it does, it just gives me anxiety and fear to think about posting pictures of myself online.
Initially, social media was thought to be a waste of time and a distraction. Although I know it holds value, I still align with that sentiment for the most part. I’ve seen how destructive it can be and how students can waste hours on it, completely distracted, and use it as a procrastination outlet. However, that may speak more to the social media user rather than the platform. Regardless, I waste my time on enough things (thanks Netflix for taking up all my time) so I just never felt compelled to add another distraction to my day.
I have a pretty severe fear of missing out, but I don’t like to necessarily call it FOMO (I don’t like that acronym, I think it’s weird). Therefore, I have all the notifications of my phone turned on. I get every message from my Her Campus gals instantly (shout out to Julia and Viviana for being ON that Slack messaging), I see every email from my professors as soon as it comes in, and I never miss a Canvas grade update. So, the last thing I need is to have even more notifications from apps when I already get too many as it is. And, knowing me, I would have to have all my notifications turned on, because what if I miss something? So, it seems like more work than it’s worth.
When social media was starting to become a norm for regular teenagers to have, I was in high school. That’s when everyone first got Facebook (I know, a little old school) and Instagram and Twitter. They were great for talking to other people in your school and looking for hot girls to DM – at least that’s what the boys used them for at my high school. Well, believe it or not, I didn’t have many friends in high school, and I didn’t really want another reason for someone to ridicule me, so why would I get a social media where my classmates and random strangers could see my pictures and make fun of me? Also, it was a little intimidating. All of the cooler people had the most followers which also equated to having the most friends. Of which I had neither, so therefore I would be considered not cool on the internet. Hence, I mostly avoided them because I just saw them as avenues for bullying. It also didn’t help that I’m pretty technically inept, so learning how to navigate a social networking website was a little beyond my abilities in those days.
Because of how prolific these accounts were becoming and have become, cyberbullying was and still is a big issue. At the start of every school year, we would have cyberbullying assemblies telling students not to do it and how to report it if it was happening to them. I mean, everyone remembers that iconic movie, Cyberbully, with Emily Osment. That alone prevented me from ever wanting to share anything on the internet. I also saw how mercilessly some of my classmates were bullied online; their photographs, intended for boys or significant others, passed around and forever ingrained in the corners of the internet, never able to be forgotten. It scared me straight in a way and prevented me from getting an account.
In college, it’s a little different. Social media accounts are teaching tools and useful for networking and ways for future employers to find you, as well as you to potentially find your future job. So, I amended my strict no-socials rule once I learned how constructive they could actually be. I do, indeed, have a LinkedIn (connect with me!) because it’s used in a strictly professional way, and there’s less of a social element with friends, and more so with coworkers, of which I now have an abundance of. Seeing the value of them, other than just people comparing themselves to others and using them as a way to build oneself up or tear themselves down, gave social media some value I hadn’t seen before.
The other really popular thing I learned once getting to college was that clubs and organizations have social media groups of their own. Facebook groups, Discord channels, Slack workplaces, GroupMe chats – you name it, I’m in a group that uses it. So, it became imperative that I have those socials to stay on top of meetings and events. Even my job on campus has a Facebook. So, of course, I got all of those. It became increasingly difficult to stay social media-free in college. It’s either you have them and you’re included, or you don’t, and you get left behind. And getting left behind wasn’t an option for me.
However, I do sometimes think about getting those socials that everyone talks about. Even writing for Her Campus has made me question my decision occasionally. We put on so many events that are open to the public (shout out to the PR team and events coordinators) that get shared on our socials, primarily Instagram, which I don’t have. So, I can’t help in sharing the posts or spreading the word because I choose to not engage in those activities. And even though I’m confident in my choice, I still wish I could help out because I know how much work and thought are put into those events and the promotion of our articles.
Also, dating without socials is a bit more awkward as well. When you meet a guy or a girl out at a bar and want to see them again, but you don’t want to give them your phone number, giving a Snapchat or some other social media contact is just safer. It’s way easier to block some creep on an app than to block a contact or change your phone number. When I was first single in college, I did get more social media accounts for the sole purpose of Snapping my roommate funny pictures of dogs I see around and to give to guys I want to see again in lieu of my phone number. It makes me feel more in control like I can determine when and if a guy can talk to me. Social media gives me that power.
Despite my few concessions and accounts, I still hold strong on my stance to not have social media. And the few accounts I do have, I don’t spend a whole lot of time on them. I check my LinkedIn a couple of times a week and only go on Facebook when I need to pick up a shift. But I want to be clear, I don’t think the internet is all bad. It can be incredibly useful; families reconnect, jobs are done, careers made, relationships forged every day. As my story has hopefully made abundantly clear, completely living without social media isn’t that feasible, at least as a college student where my academic, social and professional goals are all more easily achieved through social media. It’s a balance between wanting to just exist in my world of printed books and in-person communication and the real world where online communication exists. So, I suppose this article should be titled “Why I Wish I Didn’t Have Social Media.”