So far I am very happy I did.
It took a little while (a few days) to start to lose that feeling of needing to check on my accounts. It took a few more days to lose the ongoing need for someone to validate me with a ‘like’ or ‘share’.
The primary risk I can see from leaving social media in this day and age is disconnection from people you actually care about.
We use social media as an informal social gathering, where we can share our life highlights and witness those of the people we care about. On the surface, this sounds kinda amazing, but there is something that doesn’t feel quite right to me.
I recently had dinner with some old colleagues. That 2 hour dinner was infinitely more socially rewarding than having tracked their social media accounts for the last year. That isn’t a comment on the quality of their social media accounts. That is a comment on how much richer face-to-face interactions are.
Having left social media then, the onus is on me to ensure that I am contacting the people I care about and organising times to connect with them.
So I started that this week. And I will continue it into the new year.
And to be honest, regardless of social media status, this seems like a simple pathway to wellbeing. Shouldn’t we all be identifying the key people in our lives and placing them into our schedule?
Dr Gareth Furber 