As a blogger and millennial, you would expect me to love social media and all that it has to offer.
It connects me with brands and fellow content creators. On a personal level, it enables me to connect with friends and family around the world - but all that aside, I've grown to hate it.
Sure hate is a strong word, but over the last few months, I have become completely disillusioned with social media.
When I first started blogging I quickly realised that I needed to up my social media game and at first it was great, I tried really hard to make some platforms purely professional and manage to keep others quite personal. However, I soon found myself falling into an awful routine.
Wake-up: check Instagram and Facebook
On the morning commute: check Instagram
At my work desk: check Instagram
During lunch: check Instagram
On the evening commute: check Instagram
During the evening: spend most of it until I would sleep checking Instagram
Wake-up during the night: check Instagram
Even whilst sleeping, I would be thinking about Instagram and whether or not my numbers had gone down. Worrying about whether or not people had liked my photos. It had become an addiction and one that needed kicking to the curb!
My addiction/obsession left me feeling completely uninspired. I struggled to write, struggled to take photos, struggled with my creative thinking and held no desire to share my life with others online.
I began to compare myself with other content creators and every image that I scrolled past would fill me with dread because I had fully convinced myself that my content was sub-par and not worthy of being seen. I felt like a fraud, I would have friends/family and friendly strangers telling me that I was "doing so well" and that my feed looked "really good," when in reality I just didn't see what they were seeing and I was forcing myself to keep up with the Joneses in order to be accepted in the online sphere.
I decided to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation I was in, to take time out and realise why I started blogging in the first place. I loved writing and creating but this was sucked out of me with every new algorithm that was introduced, every new requirement that was needed to be noticed and every new creator that would appear on my feed.
I deleted all the social media apps on my phone and even went to the extent of blocking such sites, just in case I had the urge to check them within my browser. It was difficult at first, but as time went on I started immersing myself back into the real world, I wasn't concerned about posting my every move or any new life event online. In terms of creativity, I was actually able to have a clear head and think of ideas without comparing them to anything and anyone else's. I allowed myself to be vulnerable again with being a creator and really went back to basics (and by that I mean the days before social media took over).
I'm glad that I took the time out needed, it has been very beneficial and now I'm determined to post what I want and when I want. The obsession with posting at a particular time in order to get the most likes and comments is a thing of the past - I just want to do things my own way and hopefully, enjoy using social media in a healthy way.
LF
x
Photography by Stacey White
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