time spent offline

As someone who has spent the better part of the past six years without social media I can make bold claims like most of us would be better off if social media didn’t exist— socially, psychologically, physiologically. Most of us know this to be true instinctively. I wonder then, how come we choose social media over our social, mental, physical well-being? Would it have been so bad if we all collectively avoided social media— ignored Facebook and never bothered to make a Twitter account— and let it die off in its infancy back in the 2010s? Yet, here we are and social media is a necessary evil; something unpleasant that must be accepted in order to achieve a particular result. But at what cost? And what if social media was not a necessary evil; not even necessary at all? What if it didn’t exist entirely?

I knew I would be better off without social media since… since I got on social media.

My first attempt to get away from it was back in 2011 when I deleted my Facebook account. I loathed how much control Facebook had over my attention: I simply could not get off. Despite my best efforts to log off Facebook and do my homework instead, it felt physically impossible to pull myself away from Facebook’s pull. It terrified me. Luckily, naturally defiant and radical, at 16, without anyone’s warning, advice, counsel I hit delete on Facebook; all my photos, status updates, “friends” gone in an instant. I was relieved.

It was important for me to delete Facebook— although I ended up picking up a raging addiction to Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram— because it showed me that nothing bad happens if you delete your social media account. Life kind of goes on. A few years later, when I deleted my Twitter account and got off social media entirely, I knew I would be fine. Just like I was fine after I deleted Facebook, after I deleted Tumblr, Instagram and so on. Life adjusts accordingly. Since I was fine without Facebook back when Facebook was all the rage, I knew I would be fine without Twitter when it is all the rage today. If social media didn’t exist, I would be fine without it.

Without social media, the world shrinks.

It becomes just you and the people you interact with and know in real life; mostly your immediate family, IRL friends, coworkers, and from social activities you are a part of where you see people regularly. That is it. You quickly notice how few people you interact with day to day in the offline world. (This is freeing!)

In any given week, I interact with no more than 20 people, including coworkers, and I can barely keep up! Unless you are famous or otherwise important, it is impossible to know, interact with, and keep up with the lives of 200+ people in real life. Social media gives the illusion of social connection but the amount of work required for actual connection with another human being is astronomical. There isn’t enough time nor energy in the world to allow for gathering, processing and computing the lives of hundreds of people in a meaningful way for sustainable, long-term, fulfilling connections.

Without social media, what you know about people is what they directly tell you during a phone call or a dinner date. When relationships end— a move, leaving a job, a breakup— the person ceases to exist too; poof, gone. It is such a relief. I used to think I should find a way to keep up with people that leave my life due to circumstances but I have accepted now if texts, a call, or email exchange cannot sustain the connection once circumstances change, then that is someone that’s meant to be in my life only for the season. Sometimes I run into people from way past and I am delighted to catch up and hear about what they have been up to. I love that they are frozen in time in my memory, years ago, and every update they have feels nostalgic and delicious.

Without social media, you learn to love people: Love is patient, love is kind.

There isn’t the internet, the devices, the screen to get between you and the Other. You learn to be patient with people; you have no other option. You cannot scroll them away. You cannot mute them. You cannot discard them at whim because you have your other 200+ friends to scroll through, like, comment and subscribe. You don’t ignore social plans and decline dinner invites because the alternative isn’t watching your 200+ friends live their best lives on Instagram; it’s just you noticing time pass by slowly and indifferently in the quiet corner of your mind. So you fix your face, you adjust your makeup and you learn to show up and love on your friends. Plus, without social media consuming all your time and energy, you have the brain and heart capacity to pay real attention to the people around you; to hear what they have to say. And I mean all kinds of people— from the cashier to the small child instructing and scolding their even smaller sibling (children are an absolute treasure!)

Once you really pay attention to people, you realize things that amaze and delight you— quirks, ticks, humanity— and you learn to love people for it dearly. Now, you won’t like all of them and some people do deserve your utter contempt for them but if you really pay attention and listen when people talk, you have no choice but to love them deeply; they’re just like you, trapped in this lifetime of confusion, fear, loss, pain, desire, despair and the ever looming tragedy of it all ending someday. You would think, for how much we complain about life, we would all feel at ease with knowing it will end someday. Surely, forever is nightmarish. If social media didn’t exist, if we didn’t have the bravado the screens and devices provide, we would learn to love people far easier than allowing influencers influence how we treat the people around us.

Without social media you learn to appreciate the mundane.

You appreciate mundane conversations. You appreciate mundane activities. All of a sudden, you are grateful for the barista that strikes up a conversation with you. You blabber about the mundane and you listen intently to their blabber back at you because that is all you have to pass the time until your coffee is ready; no social media to scroll through.

All of a sudden, when your boyfriend suggests hanging out and going for a walk at the park, it sounds like the best thing the world has to offer. You don’t know any better; you don’t have social media showing you how much better everyone else is living and all you have is a stupid park. You are just happy you have this park to go to, with someone you love and someone who loves you. Without social media, you are freed from the obsession to curate a certain persona online, a version of You that is slightly better than what reality offers. A version that will impress your imaginary friends and ex-boyfriends. There is only one version of you in real life, the You that exists in reality. There are no camera angles to position your body differently so you look better and no time to type out and edit precisely what you want to say so you sound less of a blabbering mess. It’s a relief, to have only one version of You to keep up with, maintain- blabbering mess and all. If social media didn’t exist, there would not be a curated version of people for digital consumption.

Getting off social media has been great news for my body. This was unexpected. For starters, I spend way less time in vertical position scrolling. I spend most of my days sitting, standing, walking, pacing around doing things. I barely spend much time looking down at my phone— I only use my phone for texting, calling, music, and GPS. My posture has greatly improved! I even developed a consistent exercise habit to spite my social media/internet addiction. In the beginning, whenever the time to get ready and leave for a workout class rolled around and I have all the excuses in the world to stay home instead, I would ask myself what would do if I stayed home, and the answer was obviously sad that I would force myself to go to class instead. When I committed to not wasting my time/life on social media, I found that I had nothing better to do besides scrolling and that saddened me and motivated me to cultivate hobbies, activities, interests offline to better waste my time/life. If social media didn’t exist, we all would be fit and sexy with great posture! Just kidding, can’t blame social media for everything.

But, without social media, without a single exaggeration, life is amazing. It’s not even comparable. I rarely think about social media anymore. It has been so long to recall a life on social media. Being offline is my normal. My utter obsession is with the offline world that remains. What feels incomprehensible to me now is social media. I cannot fathom what reasons I would have to go back on Instagram or Twitter. (I refuse to call it anything but) I spend my days in total freedom from the tyranny of social media, without a single minute of my life wasted on any of those platforms, and I am all the better for it. About six years ago, social media or rather my addiction to social media controlled me. I was obsessing over the lives of people I barely knew and arranging and rearranging my life to curate a better version of myself for digital consumption, not realizing there are better things to do in this lifetime, in the real world, if only I dared to envision a world, my world, without social media. Reality has exceeded my expectations and if social media didn’t exist, we would all be better off IRL.