I’ve decided the more I’m off social media, the more creative I can be, which is why it looks like another social media detox is coming up in the next week or so and it may last 30-days like I did earlier this year.
Actually, saving my creativity isn’t the only reason for dropping off social media – saving my sanity is more important at this point. In May I actually deleted my Facebook account, except for a ghost account to keep my blog page on there. Ignoring my better judgment, I went back on at the end of the summer and I can’t see that it has improved my life much at all.
When I slip into a depression slump I find myself scrolling through social media too much and when I scroll through social media too much I don’t do things I need to do or really want to do, like write my book or write a blog post or take photographs or – blah – clean the house. I just end up a depressed, moody slug sitting in front of my computer. I also end up angry, bitter and frightened for my childrens’ future.
This past spring I did a social media detox and that’s when I started writing ‘A Story to Tell’ and decided to publish it as a weekly serial on here and then as a Kindle book. The success for me was simply how writing the story, and sharing it on my blog, was a distraction from social media, “news”, and from some challenging relationships in my life.
When I go on social media, I end up so wrapped up in the nonsense I read that I neglect the parts of my life that actually bring me joy — especially the more creative parts.
Social media is an addiction for many people. If you think it isn’t for you, do what I did last December and focus on how often you reach for your phone or computer to log into social media each day. Notice how many times you log into social media when you’re bored, lonely, procrastinating or avoiding real life (or certain people). I bet it’s more than you think because I know it was for me.
Another important aspect of learning how social media affects you is to notice how you feel after you sign off social media, or a news site. Do you feel happier? I’m going to guess the majority of us can’t say that we feel anymore enlightened, elated, or hopeful about life after we’ve scrolled through a social media site. On the contrary, we probably feel like the world is on fire.
For creatives, it’s important to ask yourself if social media supports or hinders your creative flow. I’ve personally found that excessive social media use rarely supports creativity. In fact, for me, the constant digital noise I once engaged in silenced creativity altogether.
How can you think of new ideas, or use your imagination, when someone, or something, is constantly in your ear telling you what you think and who you are? More than once in the last two years, I have read about the need for all of us to seek more solitude and shut out the noise of the world around us.
Silence can facilitate daydreaming and daydreaming supports and strengthens our imagination. Imagination leads to creativity and then creativity leads to joy for even the most left-brained person out there. Creativity isn’t always about the arts . Creativity is also important for technical thinkers out there who need time create plans for projects or lists for completing whatever it is that helps them feel more organized. For many of us, organization helps us feel more grounded. Not having the time to create that organization because we are distracted by social media can leave us feeling discombobulated.
I have asked myself why there were so many great writers hundreds of years ago and less of them today? I have a feeling it is because hundreds of years ago the only thing people had time to do when the sun went down was think and daydream.
It’s not that social media is all evil. It connects us with new people, new ideas, and different worlds. It helps us reach people in a way we never could before. The evil part of social media is that we have allowed it, and what is shared on it, to distract us to the point that we have pushed aside activities that could actually further our society. Social media has no power over us that we don’t give it and many of us (me included) have given it awhole lot of power, let me tell you.
I don’t have any proof that inventions and innovations have decreased since the Internet and social media took over the world, and the exact opposite may be true in some fields, but I wonder if cures for cancer, or solutions to climate change, would have been found already if half of us weren’t scrolling social media; watching the circuses that are our congresses and parliaments; judging our neighbors; tsk-tsking the family member or acquaintance in the middle of a divorce who has decided to write about it on social media; comparing ourselves to every other mother, writer, photographer, human being on the planet; and trying to change ourselves to fit some imaginary ‘normal’ in society.
Think about all the positive changes we could have made, not only in our own personal lives but in the world in general, if we weren’t staring at cat memes on our phones all day long. I have a feeling Satan knows that and has enjoyed dangling stupidity in front of us so we wander off the path we should have been taking all along.
All of this to say, I need another social media detox and you probably need it too. During my break last year and earlier this year, I offered some tips how to “survive” (or rather thrive) when you leave social media (even if only for 30-days); what I had time to do once I set social media aside; and how I felt when I logged back into Facebook after such a long break.
I know some of my blog readers aren’t even on social media (God bless you!) and some were on and promptly logged back off again. What’s your experience with social media? Do you find it stifles your creativity or productivity? How do you handle that? Are you better than me at balancing social media with your real life? If so, I’d love some pointers about how you do it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. The last time I wrote about social media (Facebook for most of us), I had some really fun and insightful comments.
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I was saying inside my head, amen,amen, amen after each point you made. It has been my hardest thing to get use to after coming home from living pretty much off the grid overseas. My friends joke about me not answering their text as often as they think I should. A few put me on a guilt trip for not carrying my phone all the time. I do let my blog talk for a lot and post it on facebook. Always surprised that some of those who get on to me don’t read it. What I have learned is life for most is all about them and they may ask how are you doing but they really want to just tell me how they are doing which normally leaves me depressed. I am not a venter or an enabler so I have struggle with some who call me friend yet only use me to vent. This was an excellent post, you spoke my heart on this issue. thanks
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That’s exactly it about most people just want to talk about them. I had this woman I didn’t know well talking to me on FB and she really only contacted me when she wanted to tell me about some drama in her life. It was weird. Being on social media really does clamp my creativity down. It kills it, in fact.
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I got a bit hung up on the cure for cancer bit, mostly because my husband is a cancer researcher and he comes home a lot to complain about all of his younger colleagues being on their phones too much. They’ve spent the past couple of weeks working way over time to correct mistakes made by people 6 months ago to get a package submitted to the FDA, and I wonder just how much of the lack of actual work all that time ago could be attributed to social media, or smart phones in general. Personally, I think smart phones and tablets are the worst inventions ever, but social media is a very close second. All the comparison traps people complain about all the time drive me up the wall. I get how they suck people in, but doing a detox as you are doing and have done isn’t out of the question, or should be, for anyone. It’s like an evil vacuum. Once it sucks you in, you’re stuck. I don’t dare breathe a word of it in public, but I long for the older, simpler days when there weren’t even cell phones, when people had to go out and actually talk to each other or maybe just enjoy 5 minutes out in nature. I crave that silence you mentioned and honestly think it’s the healthiest thing for my brain. Technology isn’t always a bad thing, but I do think it’s teaching kids how not to be bored, and I think it’s that boredom that we need to really be able to come up with new and interesting ideas. Social media is slowly killing us. Or I might just be crazy. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
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You’re not crazy. You’re absolutely right!
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I had to cut way back on fb because of the negativity. I have Instagram, but I don’t use it much. I will keep both, just limit my use. Even though WP is a form of social media, it’s a different kind in my opinion… I love the positivity here.
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WordPress is much different to me. People know how to move on when they don’t agree instead of trying to make everyone agree with them. I haven’t been on Instagram in two weeks. Not really into sharing my life too much on there – weird vibe there anymore
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Yes it’s way different here…a breath of fresh air! And I don’t blame you for staying away from anything with a weird vibe. Wise decision! 🙂
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I can’t even express how much I agree with your post here! All I can say is “ditto, ditto, ditto!” I go on social media detox often because of its time sucking, anger promoting, depression causing aspects.
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That’s the best way to put it – they like us angry and depressed because then we just keep going back to it and keep the cycle going
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I always feel like such an oddball when around family and friends. I don’t use a cell phone, I know about but don’t use Pintrest, I tried and keep trying Instagram but I guess I am just not the narcissist type for that to succeed, and I don’t have a Facebook account.
When I come into contact with relatives I haven’t seen in years (long story there) they always say to follow them on twitter, facebook etc… and I always say I can email, hand write and mail a letter, phone them up on a land line or they can follow my blog (which they don’t) if they want to connect with me. Otherwise it is face to face moments at once a year family get togethers. I actually have some great family members that have decided to try things this way and I love being in contact with them now. They always seem happier when they are off as well.
One time I was trying to have a fun conversation with my cousin that I hadn’t seen for years and started talking about painting a floor and how fun that was to redo and she just gave me a look like why was I bothering her with how to redo a floor and then she shut me down and said with a sneer “Oh, I just go on Pintrest.” and then walked away.
My daughter saw the whole thing and laughed like “What was that about.” and I just shrugged my shoulders. Guess some people don’t feel comfortable with face to face conversations on being creative.
When driving around I see people looking down all the time at their cell phones meanwhile life is all around them passing them by. I get so many creative ideas when out in nature. It is beautiful to be surrounded by peace and quiet.
You are right…the devil wants people to stop connecting, to be afraid, to hate their neighbors and family, to be greedy, jealous and vain with each other. All these things are covered in social media, the needing to keep up with everyone by buying the newest trends, the aps that cover our flaws and make us beautiful in fake ways, and just wanting everything we see that we believe others have when we see the beautiful lives they post about on line. What pressure to fake that all.
The planet is also suffering with the way everyone needs to compete with one another by following a sheeple kind of way of thinking by doing everything everyone else is doing. The odd balls get attacked and hated. It is very sad. I do hope things start turning around.
It is good that you are taking a break. Have fun with your family and do all those things that you love.
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When I first discovered social media and took a few looks, my reaction was always, “Why?” Nothing about any of the sites seemed to have any relevance to reality. When I published my first book, and then set up my first blog site, I figured that I ought to have a fb page and tweet links to blog posts, so I set those up (“following” the bare minimum of other people, as required for participation), and I may have garnered a reader or two that way for my blog, but I’m positive there has been no benefit to the publishing I’ve done. I tried setting up a pinterest, but it was confusing and didn’t seem to be worth the effort, anyway. I do have a personal fb account, where I get feeds from a few selected relatives, businesses, the National Weather Service, and academic think-tanks, but it takes me less than five minutes to surf that and get updates.
In a perverse way, I’m glad that social media is out there to occupy the bread-and-circuses crowd, because otherwise I’m sure there’d be a lot more spam in my email (I remember when email was new, and everybody was sending out what in snail-mail days were called chain letters, and when social media was invented, that kind of nonsense disappeared from my in-box).
Maybe it’s my age (I was raised in the day when creativity was the norm, not the exception). There are plenty of other things to fill up my time (some arguably more important than others). so I have no interest in maintaining an active presence on social media.
Wishing you the best of luck with your detox.
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That’s true about the email! I remember that too!
As for publishing – it’s helped me some but not a ton, no. I keep it up there for that and that’s about it. I rarely post on my personal page anymore and while I used to share tons of photos of my kids there I no longer do that either. It started to feel weird when I would start to tell someone I hadn’t seen in awhile about my life and they’d say “yeah… I read about that on Facebook” and then look bored. I realized they could care less about my life so why share it there or in person. And now I don’t see them online or in real life and life is good 😊
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