Leaving Social Media

I talked about my "struggle" with quitting social media in the past.
In the end, one of the most important lessons I learned seems fairly obvious when looking back, yet it wasn't to me.
This lesson likely decides whether you fail or succeed with breaking free of social media.

And this lesson is:

#1. Get a new set of friends

Like the majority of people, I stayed in contact with most of my friends through social media. This was especially true for my online friends.

Of course I did not want to break with all my friends. Some of them were people I've known for many years, we went through a lot together.
So in my "naivety" I thought I could leave social media and keep my good friends at the same time.
I told them about ways to contact me through e-mail, messengers, etc.

And at first it worked fine - it worked even better than during the social media days.
But then, one after another, they stopped talking to me. Until literally no-one talked to me anymore.

This was quite the hard fact to accept. I thought, maybe I pissed them off in some way. Or I misjudged our friendships, and we were more like loose acquaintances.

But then the weird stuff began to happen. I got notifications that they tried to contact me or send me messages on social media. When I inquired, I got replies like: "Couldn't you login to social media again? It's much easier for me to send you a message there."

So, the good news was, my friends had not forgotten about me. But the weird news was, it didn't make sense. Changing from a social media app to another messenger and sending a message is a matter of a few seconds, or a few minutes at most.
Surely they had a few seconds of time to spare?

Well, over time I realized: they probably don't. A social media user is glued to their endless and everlasting flow of input and images between horror and quick gratification so that they really were not able to draw their eyes away from social media, not even for mere seconds.
After all, I was like that too, when I was still on there.


I don't want to put anyone down. But if you intend to leave social media, you should be aware that most of your friends, who are on social media, will not talk to you anymore, outside of social media - for whatever reason they might have.

Out of 100s of "social media friends" I had, only 4-5 still talk to me on a regular basis.

I think it's not unlike other "bad habits" that can be tied to a social group; booze, drugs, maybe even "over-eating"; you will have a hard time quitting if you stay in that milieu.

Now some might say: "Who cares? Everything comes with a price. Just accept it. It is like it is".

Well, my advice isn't to mourn or grieve about this; but that you need to take care that you *gain* a new social life, meet friendly people, stay in touch with the human race.

Because otherwise, you might end up becoming a total hermit; and this might be too stressful to endure, so you re-join the social media services that you used to frequent.
It was the case for me. Several times.

Simply quitting social media apps, and then becoming a loner is neither a stable or healthy foundation.

So better take care!