A Whole365 without Instagram (and FB)
For the first year after my dad's death, I shared publicly about the experience of his dying and the grief that followed. For the second year, my desire is for retreat and privacy. I hope and pray for God to do a hidden work in my life as I continue to process my trauma and pain without social media.
If you know me, you know I'm always taking breaks from Instagram, deleting it from my phone, fasting for a month, and pondering getting rid of it forever. I haven't had Facebook on my phone for years. Over the years, I've gotten rid of other social media, like Twitter, and I never let myself even consider the use of TikTok (because I would be on it scrolling all-of-the-time).
In his diary from his time spent at a Trappist monastery, Henri Nouwen muses, "When nobody writes anymore; when hardly anyone even thinks of you or wonders how you are doing; when you are just one of the brothers doing the same things as they are doing, not better or worse; when you have been forgotten by people--maybe then your heart and mind have become empty enough to give God a real chance to let his presence be known to you" (The Genessee Diary, July 12).
(He was writing this pre-email and Facebook. What would he think of us now?)
After a year of reminding you all of my pain and grief, in the hopes that we would more readily remember and care for all those in our community who weep, I need a year where I make more space than ever in my mind and heart for my Lord Jesus.
No distractions, no escaping from myself or my sadness. No seeking solace in the little red hearts or the comments or the messages.
I'm not saying those things are bad all the time for everyone. But if I don't give it a chance, if I don't try to live my life without (what I think) is a somewhat false sense of connectedness and importance through social media, how will I know if the quality of my life really does improve without it? (My hunch is-- quality of life does improve.)
Here's another thing about grief: grief is work. It's work that takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. More time than a year (yes, people are sad and need time to process a great loss for more than year) and so much energy that many grievers simply cannot live the same pace of life as they did before their loss.
Because it takes time and energy to process grief, I've learned how important it is to protect my emotional energy. It's like my grief already uses most, if not all, of my energy tank for processing and regulating. So trying to process and compartmentalize what I see on social media is almost impossible.
After watching 2020 unfold on social media, and trying to process all of the posts about what I should or shouldn't be doing, how I should be thinking, the ways that my thinking or beliefs are wrong, I realized I simply do not have the capacity to hold both my own hurt and the hurt of hundreds of others sharing on social media. It's not that their ideas and beliefs aren't important or something I shouldn't consider. But I don't have the capacity to think about them right now, on top of my own pain.
What I find especially frustrating about social media is that I could be hopping on for a little mental break, when I suddenly tap to a triggering story post telling me how I should live in a pandemic (from a friend, not an expert) or what I should be doing for racial healing when I haven't opened my phone specifically to think about those things. I do want to think about them, but only when I'm mentally prepared and ready to intentionally engaged; I don't want it shoved in front of my face when I'm not asking for it.
Maybe this seems selfish, because there are people who are never able to escape the realities of systemic racism or who are having a particularly hard time with our pandemic world. But I will only be able to make a real lasting difference for those people when I'm intentional about it, rather than passive and reactionary. (This may not be true for everyone. Some of you might like learning about politics and social justice and the coronavirus on social media. I do not. I do like reading about faith and spirituality, relationships and singleness, grief and art, but people posting thoughtfully about those things tend to be less bossy and know-it-all than the people who like to remind you we're still in a pandemic, thanks.)
All throughout the months of hard lockdown, I kept thinking, "I need to delete this. This isn't good for me." But I didn't, and as a result, I was more emotionally unstable than I needed to be. I didn't give myself the boundaries I needed. I didn't give myself the real break I needed, one I've been needing for a long, long time, after using Instagram for about 7 years.
When we found out my dad was sick, I was at the beginning of a social media break. I wanted to see how long I could go without Instagram. A few months earlier, I'd written about not wanting to use Facebook for the rest of my life, after reading an incredibly brilliant Zadie Smith film review of The Social Network.
I'm glad that I wasn't on Instagram while he was sick. I was able to focus on him. I downloaded the app a few times to post about him and give an update: it was happening so quickly and there were too many people who wanted to know how he was doing. The best way to update was on social media. We didn't even have time to set up a Caring Bridge page since the battle was over before it even really began.
After my dad passed, I started using social media more intentionally: to share about grief, and to find others doing the same.
I think social media has some really wonderful outcomes if you use it well: you meet interesting people through shared interests or experiences. You learn new things. You document events and ideas that are important to you.
Sometimes it can be a lifeline. I found a few people writing about grief with such honesty and depth, and I'm not sure I would have gotten through those early months without them. I messaged with one woman in particular and we formed a friendship beyond social media because she got it. She understood what I was going through. I felt seen and known by her.
Still, I've been aware of my tendencies to overuse Instagram in particular, after mindlessly using it for many years. And much of the time in the past few months, I simply don't like being on it. From my conversations with my friends, I'm not the only one.
I wonder if everyone experienced social media overload, locked away in our apartments and homes for weeks and months?
I want the real world. I want to talk with someone and see their smile, hear their voice, grasp their arm, give them a hug. I listened to a podcast episode of The Place We Find Ourselves with therapist Adam Young about how important nonverbal cues are, and how we actually have the ability to help regulate each others emotions when we're physically in person with them (bad explanation, but give the episode a listen).
Then, I watched The Social Dilemma. I found the documentary both true to my experience of social media and honestly terrifying. One quote stuck with me, from Tristan Harris, former Google Employee: "Social media isn’t a tool that’s just waiting to be used. It has its own goals and its own means of pursuing them by using your psychology against you."
A major point of the film is we haven't evolved enough (or, in my Christian understanding, we weren't created) to have as many "friends" and interactions as we do on social media. I have about 600 followers on Instagram, and I follow about the same. I'm not designed to have that many friends. I'm not even designed to have half that many friends. But I get addicted to the little red hearts that show up when I post, or the little red number of messages in the upper right hand corner of my app after I post a story.
No, I'm designed to live in the present moment with people in physical proximity, that I can see and touch. I'm grateful for technology that keeps me meaningfully connected with my closest friends that live far away now. And that I'll be able to FaceTime my cousin Emma while she lives in Alaska for the next few years.
Another key point of the documentary is how big tech companies are more focused on the question of what we can do with technology rather than the question of should we. There are major ethical issues that these companies have been avoiding facing for years, such as whether or not they should save literally all of our data and then feed people news and information based on their confirmed biases.
So I really didn't want to be on social media after watching The Social Dilemma.
I could try to be more structured with my use of it. But I'm a bit of an all-or-nothing person. I feel I need a good, long period of resetting myself before trying to structure my use of it. It's the social media equivalent of a Whole30, except for me, it's going to be a Whole365 days without Instagram, and with very limited use of Facebook, which isn't anywhere near as addicting to me as insta, but which I need for my work.
I plan to continue writing for my blog, for those of you who follow my writing beyond Instagram. Writing for this platform doesn't cause anxiety for me; posting about my writing on Facebook and Instagram does. It's an added layer of time and energy that I don't want to expend for the next year.
I hope to use the minutes and mental focus I gain back to read more--I always want to read more--and to start working on a few other creative projects I've been dreaming and scheming about.
I deeply appreciate those of you who have read and commented and liked my writing. And I do care about what's going on in your lives. But as a friend said in a conversation today--I'd rather hear about it in person. Or over a phone call, text, video, or voice recording. Instead of scrolling on Instagram for my allotted 15 minutes a day (and, let's be honest, snoozing my Screen Timer over and over), I'm going to be FaceTiming you or writing a letter.
Why do I share these thoughts in a blog post? Why post about it on Instagram?
Because I know myself. I need the accountability. If you know I'm not supposed to be on Instagram, I can't hop on and like your posts and send you messages. I can't hit that snooze button this time.
And I also don't want to leave anyone hanging: if you want to get in touch and don't have my personal phone number or email, send me a message through my contact page.
Thank you again for reading and sticking with me. I'll see you here over the next few months, and I'll see you back on Instagram in 2022. Or not? Time will tell.
Cheers, and while I don't think 2021 is going to magically fix any of our 2020 problems, I do hope that it's a better year for you than this past one. With that said, I can wish you a happy new year.