But when the app became available on my new, shiny mobile toy, I could not escape. I checked in everywhere. I posted witty updates and tagged friends and places. I quoted insightful articles. I was in the maelstrom of social media, and I reveled in the connectivity, the community of it all. I loved it.
Until I didn’t.
The honeymoon came to a screeching halt for me somewhere in the summer of 2016 when my world seemed to tilt on its axis. I was never an online voyeur, but when I accidentally caught a so-called friend in a blatant lie due to a social media post that I happened upon, I felt angry and betrayed. And then, well, That Election happened. The ugliness preceding and proceeding it permeated my peaceful online world.
I was swept up in the mire. The device that formerly made me feel so warm and fuzzy and part of the lovely human experience was now a source of anxiety. People whom I thought I knew exposed themselves as racists, as misogynists. My freshly tapped rage spilled out from my thumbs into the digi-verse and I could not put it down and I could not look away.
I cowered in my kitchen, tilting at windmills in the comments section while my wonderful family was playing and talking and living in the very next room. My fitful sleep was punctuated by Neuromancer dreams in a Blade Runner landscape. Interestingly, I’d never been haunted by the book or film respectively, but the Pandora’s Box I’d opened in my online life somehow triggered apocalyptic fears.
I knew it was time to stop.
That year I took a month off from Facebook and I was surprised to find the transition painless. Since then, I’ve scheduled regular digital fasts which help me realign my priorities, and I have automated limits on my phone for social media use each day. I read more paper books, which I prefer to eBooks anyway. I play with my kids and talk to my husband more. I sleep more peacefully and my dreams no longer pulse with electricity and hate.