Last week I deleted Twitter and Facebook off of my phone. I didn’t have any particular concrete reason or goal. I wasn’t angry with technology or worried about carpal tunnel in my thumb. I think I had a growing, nagging feeling that I was relying on social media too much to entertain me when I was bored, and the more I relied on it, the more quickly I became bored.
I recently went to the post office- something I do every 3-4 months because man, I loathe the post office- and found myself stuck in a line of 20 people with two open windows and no phone in my pocket. I mentally wrote at least 10 scathing (yet witty!) Tweets about how terrible the post office is and then I realized just how pathetic that was. And then what would I do? Wait for people to reply to my wittiness? Tell me they too hate the post office? I felt like a loser. An overly-reliant on technology and pocket friends loser.
Don’t get me wrong, I think social media is great. I’ve witnessed both the positive (raising money or support for people with a medical or other crisis) and negative power behind social media (when brands behave badly) and I’m not quitting anytime soon. But the world of social media isn’t a depository for all my negative post office feelings and random thoughts about things of little consequence. In fact, if social media could respond to such things, it would probably tell me that nobody cares.
That isn’t to say social media isn’t the place for the random, the pithy or the occasional product review question. But at the same time, “thinking before you tweet” isn’t half bad either. This past weekend we went out of town and I put Facebook and Twitter back on my phone, if only to entertain me for the drive to and from. I’ll probably take them off again this week as I re-learn to pick up a book instead of Twitter when I’m waiting at the doctor’s office. I don’t really have a great end to this, the perfect “and then I learned all the entertainment I need is right in my own living room, I’m so #blessed” but at the same time, not having these programs on my phone means I leave it behind a lot more often, which I’m sure isn’t a bad thing.
