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Why I quit Social Media
I joined Facebook in sixth grade, right after I came back from sleep-away camp in Northern Wisconsin. It seemed like a good way to connect with the friends I had made there, especially since I didn’t have a phone yet. Facebook circa 2010 was not as manipulative as it is now, and I didn’t spend much time on the platform, although began to change as more of my friends in junior high and highschool started to spend time on it: starting poke wars or just messagin each other.
Then in 2012, I joined Instagram, at first to post pictures of our family dog, but soon I was competing in rat race of likes and followers, just like everyone else on the platform.
Soon after, I joined SnapChat. I was forced to create a LinkedIn for a school project. I started uploading my runs to Strava. By the time I got to college, my whole life was on the internet, for the whole world to see. At the time I had no problem with this. I considered myself an open person. There was nothing wrong with showing everyone who I really was. For the awkward, introverted teenager that I was, social media was an easy, painless way to indulge in brief flashes of extroversion, and to find people who liked me for who I was, without having to wade through the real world, which was filled with loneliness and rejection.
