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How I Just Faded Away from Social Media
No planned detoxes. No withdrawal symptoms.
I suddenly just lost interest.
I have 900+ friends on Facebook and Instagram. I knew all of them, or I’ve met each of them in person at least once. Some of them I got to know better through their status updates. With some others, friendships even deepened over PMs and DMs, likes and comments. I myself used to post a lot, as I’ve used Facebook as a microblog over the years.
But since 2020, when most of our consciousnesses stuck around on cyberspace, I found myself gradually drawing away. It became too noisy, too intrusive. There were too many attention seekers, scammers, and trolls getting in the way of the stuff I preferred to see. Social media has been like this for years, but the coronavirus pandemic took it to a whole new level.
I was no longer just eavesdropping on people’s thoughts being collected as a stream gently running down my feed. They were breaking into the quiet sanctity of the home that I’ve locked down, of my own accord, from the heightened distresses of the world.
I’m not actually one to seclude myself in the delusion that what I don’t know won’t hurt me. That if I fence off other people’s dramas, toxic politics, and doomsday news about the deteriorating earth, I’ll…
