2020 has been a weird year for me, and i’d by lying if I said Lockdown wasn’t a big part of that. Ive alluded previously to media exhaustion and certainly when everything was all falling apart in March (AND April, AND May) I found myself relying on my phone and social media a lot more. One for news, two for, well, comfort I guess? During Lockdown I’ve leaned heavily into refresh loops and endless scrolling, and while for the most part I found myself informed, I was also continually, disappointed, tired, and angry. Part of this was at poor Government leadership, but a much bigger part of it was just constant online toxicity.
I was mega irritable and always drained, I had a really hard time switching off and doing things for myself. I did achieve things eventually but usually always against an unfocused self. I would switch my phone off for entire days, delete apps, and then a week and a half ago, I just decided to delete everything off Facebook outright. Individual photos from holidays, my graduation, videos, life, everything. It took forever (did you know that Facebook really doesn’t like you bulk-deleting your own content?). Increasingly in recent years I haven’t been posting and ‘engaging’ Facebook and I was only ever there for THE SCROLL and just force of habit. But doing that always fed me the same thing: lots of faux outrage and controversy all the time over lots of stuff that (really) didn’t matter, and just endless inane bickering. Likes and shares for a new shop, sponsored content, and countless “You may be interested in” posts. Annoyingly, the algorithm would continue to repeat that content over again instead of what I actually wanted to see from the people I wanted to hear from. For the last year and maybe more the site definitely wasn’t helping me “connect and share with the people in life” and in Spring 2020 that is really what I needed more than anything. The site -or my algorithm- just became a cycle of judging, hate, and misinformation- something that’s actively in the news atm with corporations and advertisers pulling out too. I doubt the companies are quite as concerned about their mental health as I was, but still.
I asked friends who weren’t on Facebook how they managed without it, if they had FOMO and just generally I think I had built up the very skewed perception that my social life was that website, and that website only. Deactivating it that sunday morning suddenly became a very big decision and I worried that my social life was over, I was going to be weird, I was going to miss so much…I just did it. Lockdown has already helped re-evaluate what and who are important in my life, I know what I like, I know what I want to do, and I know who’s interested in supporting those things by the regular check-ins and catch ups. Things pivoted and changed in these three months for myself and Facebook doesn’t have a place anymore… but for the better I think? That’s why this post exists- I’m going to try blogging again. If I have life events I should be talking about them, I should be sharing and writing about them, it’s just not something I want or necessarily need to do on Facebook. It’s 2020, social media is corporate media, I’m not sure if blogging is cool or not, lets give it a shot. It’s good to try new different things once in a while.