The Wellness Edition No. 23 // Social Media Detox

Social media is a topic I have been wanting to blog about for quite a long time already. All of us have our fair share of experiences with social media; the good, the bad and the ugly. When social media started to be the next big thing I was super excited about it - most probably because as we Germans say 'I studied something with media' so I always felt I have to stay informed about everything that is happening in the social media atmosphere. But whenever Snapchat popped up I decided that you don't have to hop on every social media train - I never understood the hype about this app for example. Maybe I am also just too old, for teenagers it seems to be the big thing. 

I came to the conclusion that less social media is more for me. As you know, I am a minimalist anyways, so same goes for my social media use and consumption. A few years ago I deleted my old Facebook account and that felt incredible. It resulted in me focusing solely on myself and not anymore paying attention to what everyone was up to - I needed that at that time, it was great. I went back to Facebook in 2014 but more on that later on. 

When I quit my old job to become self-employed I thought I had to be present on pretty much all social media platforms 'because I am a blogger now', except for Facebook - I knew for sure that I would not start a business page there for my graphic design studio and blog because as I mentioned before, me and Facebook, we just don't really click. But I started a Pinterest account and Pinterest I really love so much because it is just super inspiring. Also I started Twitter, just to see how I like that (I had Twitter before many years ago but when I moved to Spain I deleted it because I saw no value in it). So I hopped back on Twitter and after one year on Twitter I decided that Twitter really isn't for me, so I deleted the account. Why?! Too much negativity all over that place, I don't want to go into detail here, but every time I was spending too much time on Twitter, I was kind of sad afterwards so I decided time to let go of it once again. 

I really love Instagram though, I have always been into photography even though I kind of lost my interest for it when I was still studying media design (we had photography classes and they were super boring and I did not learn anything useful there) but thanks to Instagram I rediscovered my love for photography once again and for seeing all sorts of pretty things every day because that app made me realise again how much beauty you can see in the smallest things every single day. How awesome is that?! Besides that I never experienced any drama on Instagram. I met a whole lot of super kind and lovely people through Instagram (some I met in real life as well, others so far only online) and the support on Instagram is simply amazing. Whenever I decided to move to Spain and mentioned it on Instagram, people were supporting my decision, offering me help and so on. Simply amazing! So, Instagram is my favorite social media platform for sure and that's the one I will probably always stick with. 

Well, Pinterest is not very social I'd say since there is no real human interaction - but you know what, I am totally fine with that. I go to Pinterest to get inspired in all areas of life and to share my design work. Hey, Pinterest is the best for this. So big love for Pinterest as well from my side! 

Let's talk about Facebook. I am really not a fan anymore and I decided that I will certainly delete my Facebook account in the next few weeks. Facebook was great back in the days before WhatsApp was the big thing since it facilitates to stay in touch with friends and family overseas but now with WhatsApp, no need for Facebook anymore. It is even easier with WhatsApp than with Facebook and certainly there is less drama. Ok, I know that WhatsApp and Instagram are part of the Facebook gang, but these apps don't affect my mental health at all, quite the opposite, so I stay with them. But Facebook is another story, I find Facebook is very toxic. Whenever I still engaged in groups a lot, Facebook was handy, but since I barely do that these days, there is no real reason for me to stay. Facebook kind of fosters to stay in touch with people who are already a past chapter of your life and also the comparison trap is a big problem there, I am sure you can relate to what I mean like 'why is this person who went to school with me now having this super exciting life while I feel completely stuck?!' - of course we have no idea if what they constantly post about is the truth but to us it seems like the truth and in consequence we feel bad about ourselves. So, who needs this kind of drama?! As much as I try to distance myself from the FB drama and let it not affect my mental health, it always does in the end. Needless to say that all the data spying Facebook does on us is another big issue, I think it is time to let go of this Big Brother as well very soon because it just does not serve me any longer. Therefore I let go of it very soon. 

LinkedIn is handy for networking, just this year I discovered LinkedIn for me. I had an account since 2009 that I just never used for anything but now I find LinkedIn very useful to network and to discover new opportunities. LinkedIn is for business and networking, not about personal drama and personal BS that some people think they should share with the world, so LinkedIn is great. But I also try to limit my time there - too much time on social media is wasted time that could have been used for better things. I had the app installed on my phone but I deleted it to make sure to reduce my time spent on LinkedIn as well. 

So as you can see I am going through a round of social media decluttering and it feels pretty awesome. Soon I will also go through a new round of decluttering physical items (even though I have done that pretty big last year but it is time to do it again, I think doing it once a year is a very clearing and healing act for your heart and soul). Also I am currently doing some emotional decluttering that had been overdue for a very long time but a separate post about this process will probably follow soon. For now in this post I just wanted to talk about a social media detox and social media decluttering. 

If you realise that the use of social media makes you feel bad and does something with you that you don't like, I'd recommend you also start some clearing here through decluttering and seeing which social media platforms really serve you and which ones support the self-sabotaging act of holding you back. 

How do you feel about social media and which platforms are your favourite? Please share with me. xx, Phyllis