How Do We Navigate Social Media Now It's The Only Way to Socialize?

In December of last year I came back to my parents home for the weekend and decided to take this time off social media. For me, social media is not an inherently negative place. But it is time-consuming and sometimes brain-numbing and I spend far too much time on my phone when I could be doing things that are useful but more importantly, things that bring me genuine happiness and contentment.

I feel lucky in that I don’t find myself falling into the ‘comparison trap’ of social media, and specifically Instagram, like many do. On bad days, I feel envious of others whose lives look better than mine but most days, those types of thoughts don’t enter my head. Because of this, I’d never considered taking time off social media as something that would be useful for me, as this is the reason many others choose to do so.

The day I decided I would have a weekend off social media was Friday 13th December, the day after the General Election. The result of the General Election made me feel extremely emotional (angry, sad, despairing) and as my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds demonstrated, the same was true for many other people. This emotion and the fact that social media was dominated by news of the general election, something that I wanted to escape, made it clear to me that I needed a few days off.

So I deleted all of my social media apps and wasn’t tempted to check them over this 3 day period because I knew that it was a particularly negative space that weekend. I spent my time doing uni work and also relaxing, trying to do some of the things the time I’d spent endlessly scrolling had stolen from me, namely, reading and writing. But at the end of the weekend, I felt worse. Or maybe not completely worse, but definitely more lonely than before.

It made me realise how much of my social life was coming from social media. I’m thankful for social media for this, as it’s allowed me to meet so many wonderful people and find communities I wouldn’t have in the physical world. And it’s certainly helped me to grow and change as a person. But I also came to the conclusion that, of course, it wasn’t healthy to be getting so much of my social contact from social media, as nothing can replace genuine face-to-face, physical contact.

Luckily, the first few months of 2020 were far less busy for me work-wise than the last months of 2019 were, so I was able to socialise for real a lot more. And I felt so much better for it. I also tried to lower my screen time, which I did, although I won’t be sharing numbers because, as numbers often are in so many different scenarios, I think they can be a source of comparison and shame.

We often laugh as we refuse to share our screen-time with others because we are embarrassed that ours is so high. But perhaps this is because we are uncomfortable with the reasons as to why we are unable to practice self-control when it comes to social media. For a lot of us, we lose control because we seek validation and connection from social media where we don’t have it in our own lives. For me, social media allowed me to subdue feelings of loneliness. For others it might be finding validation on social media in order to forget, for a while, crippling insecurity, or to be able to enter the more ideal world you’ve created yourself, in order to escape the unhappiness you’re genuinely feeling.

Since self-isolation has begun, I’ve been totally unable to control the time I spend on my phone and the same feeling of scrolling-induced claustrophobia that I was feeling in the last months of 2019 has returned. But a social media detox doesn’t feel like an option for me right now, as much as it might help in normal circumstances, because I am craving social contact in any form I can get it, given the current situation, and I’m not about to give that up in any shape or form.

When I listen to people speak, or write, about having breaks from social media or giving it up altogether all I can think is: you are so lucky. This is because the people who tend to do this, or at least those who I’ve heard discussing it, are those who live with their partners or lots of friends and are getting the social contact we all crave from inside their households. I am lucky enough to live with a friend in usual circumstances and I feel more than able to take time off social media when we’re staying in our flat at the same time and I’m going to uni or even the library every day surrounded by people. But when I come home for the weekend and it’s just me and my close family, a social media detox doesn’t feel like a healthy thing to do. Because as much as I love my family, I’m not getting the same social connection I get from my friends, partner and colleagues from them.

Having moved back in with my parents during lockdown, I feel at a loss as how to navigate social media at this time. Should I be policing my screen time, to ensure I’m leaving time to do the things that fulfil me and make me happy? Or should I stop putting pressure on myself to do anything as it’s supposed to be done and just go with how I feel?

The problem is: I often don’t have the choice to see how I feel when it comes to social media, because it’s so instinctive to me to pick up my phone and start scrolling that I lose hours and days to it without even realising. For example, when I’m reading a book and I google the definition of a word and suddenly, it’s 30 minutes later and I’m deep into a Twitter thread. Or, I’ve woken up in the morning and decided to quickly check my emails before getting out of bed, but suddenly, an hour has disappeared and I’ve reached my screen time limit for Instagram. Or, I’m on a walk, and I’ve checked my weather app to see what time the sun will set, to make sure I get home before it goes dark, but I have a message from a woman who likes my Instagram page, and I end up spending the whole walk messaging her about common interests. By the end of the walk, I haven’t appreciated the sea or the sand or the sky, but I’ve made a new friend.

The point is, social media brings both positivity and negativity into my life but a potentially destructive part of my personality, which I’m sure is true for others too, is that sometimes I crave that negativity or at least the mindlessness that social media breeds. This means using it instinctively might not necessarily mean only using it for positive interactions like the one mentioned above and also because, I truly believe I’m addicted to social media, so my instincts surrounding it might not necessarily be healthy.

If I deactivate my social media and put my phone in a drawer, I’d waste less time, I’d read more books, I’d probably be a better writer. I’d probably exercise more and be able to run a 10K, I’d probably keep my room tidy and I’d never feel stuck in a hole that I can’t get out of. But I’d also lose the friends I’ve found online and even some of the ones who I’ve found in the big wide world, at least for a short period, whilst social media is the best way to keep up with them. I’d also feel lonely and perhaps less creatively inspired and, definitely, like I’d lost a part of my identity (whether that’s a good part or bad, I’m not sure.)

There’s no easy way to navigate social media full stop, but even more so during a global pandemic. There’s no easy way to do anything during a global pandemic, really, but social media feels particularly difficult. Because we can look to survivors of previous pandemics for most other things, but not for this. This is the first ever global pandemic that society is trying to survive in the digital world and I don’t think we should underestimate the difficulty of that.

Today, I woke up and scrolled through social media for a straight hour. I then tried to get out of bed and into the shower but ended up scrolling for longer. By 12pm my screen time had hit three hours and I felt bad about it. I considered whether I felt bad about the number or just simply bad, from coming out of the scrolling hole and I came to the conclusion that it was both. I decided to leave my phone in my room and do a jigsaw and watch TV. I did this for four hours and my brain felt clearer. Tomorrow, I will partake in a weekly digital book club that is the highlight of my week by far during lockdown, and was only made possible because of social media. I might waste time scrolling, I might engage with some amazing people and feel more positive about my life and the world for it. Every time I enter the password to my phone and click on one of the infamous apps, it’s a gamble.

Social media makes me feel very bad but it also makes me feel very good. It exposes me to some of the world’s worst people and to some of the world’s best. I would even go as far to say that it exposes me to the best and worst versions of myself, to speak in the tongue of the digital age.

With every good comes a bad, with every friend comes a troll, with every hilarious meme comes a devastating news story, with every time-wasting scroll comes an opportunity that would otherwise never have presented itself to you.

“Social media:” opens the essay of an A-Level student in 3010, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

(Plot twist: the student is a robot. But at least he’s read Dickens.)