Cutting Down On Social Media
A Personal Account (Bad Pun)...
Happy New Year! Am I still allowed to say that on January 15th? I’ll do it anyway…
A word of warning: You might wonder about the slightly different tone of this post compared to my usual ones, but I want to mix it up a bit going forward from here.
2023 brought a lot of changes for me. I finally (yay!) gave up my brick and mortar studio to only work online, and the focus of my work has also taken a turn to something I find much more fulfilling at this stage of my life.
I’ve been fairly absent from my social media accounts since October, mostly due to several writing and other projects. And honestly: It feels so much better in so many ways.
And over the last couple of days, I followed up by closing down several of said accounts, especially those that I feel no personal connection to; the ones that had always been a bit like, “It’s the thing the cool kids do, so I’ll do it, too. Perhaps? Sometimes? Ugh…”
Well, I guess I’m not a cool kid and never was. I’m also the person who is happiest when she is on her own with a good book (or in the middle of writing one herself). I love people, my whole professional life is built around them, I am not shy or socially anxious. I adore my work, but social interaction drains me, and if I have a lot of it, I need a break.
So why add more of that in my downtime?
Apart from having no desire to do so for various reasons, I slowly but surely came to the conclusion that social media is not social at all. To me, it has mostly turned into noise. Noise about who does what, who does it best, who is right, who shows emotions most heartbreakingly or elatedly so we can all get a dopamine fix while we feel for and with them. And it’s something that has been sitting wrong with me for a very long time (nobody needs to agree, this is just how I personally perceive it. If you find value in it, that’s brilliant).
There are little pockets of true connection, and I deeply appreciate those. It is great to be able to stay in touch with people you would otherwise never see or interact with. But I don’t need to be present on 10 social media accounts for that, and try to keep up with all of them.
Nothing’s private anymore…
The comfort so many seem to find in social media though—I don’t feel that at all if I’m honest. As good as it can feel to vent, to get that quick dopamine fix when people react in some way—are we really meant to live like that? Lives are deeply relational, and in my view, social media only ever gives us an illusion of that (again, I don’t expect people to agree). And let’s not talk about privacy. If you don’t want stuff out there for all eternity, don’t write it, don’t post it. You can delete it after the fact all you want, it’s still there. People can screenshot it. People can search web archives. If you’re comfortable with that, that’s okay. I sure know I’m not. I don’t want my most private moments documented on the net for all eternity and for everyone to see. Why does our phone camera need to be constantly with us, even in our most private moments of joy, sadness, grief and anger? Why can’t we feel anymore without a lens documenting it and/or sharing it with the world? I understand that people process emotions differently, but it does no harm to occasionally ask ourselves the question:
“Do I really need to share this, and if I do: Why, and what am I hoping to get out of it?”
But you need it for the business, boss babe (bleurgh)…
Apart from the very private implications of all of this, I mostly don’t want to be part of that machine professionally anymore. The expectation to give content or little nuggets of wisdom away for free so people “KLT” us has slowly begun to erode both industries I work in (again, you don’t have to agree). When I started this little experiment in autumn, I occasionally checked in on my accounts: Two weeks of no posting, sorta fine. Four weeks: The unfollows really started to kick in. And they kept on dropping like flies. And that’s totally okay and to be expected, but it shows one thing:
People are not there for us. They wouldn’t give us grace if we honestly couldn’t post anymore—unless we told them why. Four weeks of no posting is a very short time if someone is sick, or simply has no time for whatever reason, and we shouldn’t have to make a big announcement to justify it (and I think most of us have done so before, myself included). But the human element is not what many of our followers care about, despite telling us otherwise. They care about the content we have to offer, or the dopamine fix they get through us. And if that content-and/or-dopamine-machine grinds to a screeching halt, they leave.
My Substack is the exception (that might change after this post 🤣): Literally no one left, but I also don’t see it as a social media account. I see it as a mix between doing what I love most (writing!), and if that happens to reach the people who are interested or need it at that moment in time, that’s a bonus. As is the potential for community built into the platform: It might come in handy for some things I have planned for 2024, but it has a different feel to it, and that’s one of the reasons why I love this channel, and why I will keep it.
The ole content churning machine…
I have a strong aversion against the term “content creator”, and the expectations linked to it. The last three months have been so freeing that I honestly don’t want to go back.
But on a more important note: When it comes to mental health, there are no “freebies” or “hacks”. If that’s all people want, I am bowing out (un)gracefully.
On many of my social media accounts, I have always been fairly used to people sliding into my inboxes to “pick my brains”. And other than pointing them to either my ethical code where it comes to therapy, or training opportunities for their own studios, I’ve stopped engaging deeper with those requests a long time ago. As much as I’d love to, I can’t spend hours of unpaid time while having a full-time job and a family. And yet, I see highly qualified professionals constantly giving their knowledge away for free. On their social media, but also at events and for organisations, always in hopes to get more work. And then they’re crushed if it doesn’t come. I had several of these “offers” over the last couple of years, and I’ve long stopped accepting them. Call that foolish, but I believe change will only happen if we collectively think about it a bit more deeply and weigh up if we are really getting out of it what we are promised. I’ve seen and heard from colleagues for ages that they aren’t, and that’s something to reflect upon, because why are we still doing it then? Just to be the “nice one” who gets asked? Because we are used to keep on telling ourselves the lie that it’ll pay the bills eventually?
I deeply understand certain leftover sentiments from academia (I’ve been in it long enough to absolutely get it). But times have changed, and much of this, “Come to a conference/event and do a talk while having the pleasure to pay for it, or if you’re lucky we’ll waive your ticket fee,” is not doable for most freelancers. Unless we are tenured or are in an otherwise secure 9 to 5 that pays for it, or don’t need to care about our income for whatever reason, we have to stop pretending it is. And even if we are: Shouldn’t we think about those who aren’t in that position?
But you still do some “free stuff”, don’t you, you hypocrite?
I have always wished to make certain information freely accessible to support those who struggle, but the downside is that we’ve become so accustomed to everyone doing these things that everything turns into noise, and expectations begin to feel transactional. “Give me enough free stuff, constantly let me see who you are and what you stand for, and I might buy from you one day.”
How did we all survive professionally before this crappola? We sure did, and probably not any worse. Only that we were probably far less stressed about having to feed our social media presences and weird algorithms on top of it all.
If you ask me: There is too much free info out there, and for many people, it’s impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the chaff is everywhere. Only a few days ago, I saw again that people who are insufficiently trained in therapeutic modalities offer them in their performing arts studios. And I’m asking myself why we have to enmesh singing with therapy in the first place—even if we call it “coaching” to be on the safe side. When and why did that happen?
I’ve been doing this for well over a decade now, for quite some time before trauma became a buzzword and therapeutic modalities were something that got tossed around as if you could do them after a two hour class. Therapy is deeply relational, and that relational element takes time to establish (and a lot of skill on the side of the practitioner), and it always will. There are still no hacks. I see so much advice that’s useless at best and harmful at worst, but I will spare you the rant I could go on now because it is pointless and won’t change anything.
The question naturally remains: Why did I write all of this? I don’t know, I guess there is just something about being my age that makes me worry less about speaking my truth than I used to.
But one thing is certain: All of these things are important to me because I care. I care about mental health, I care about my colleagues not burning themselves out and letting those in positions of power use them, and I care about the general state this “Information Age” has left us all in. And while it has its ups, it sure has a lot of downs. I guess I’m just personally removing myself from the downs as best I can and create meaningful change. And don't they say that change always begins with ourselves?
And don’t worry, not every post on this channel will be an opinion piece like this. But perhaps I will add in the odd one just to keep things real. And if you’d like to talk about any of the things I mentioned, please leave a comment or join the chat…
Took the words outa my mouth.