Another Year, Another Social Media Break

Return of the iceman

Social media break off

I really like the title of this blog. I thought about it right when I sat down to write about my break from social media. I’ve taken social media breaks before and try to make content out of it for my return to the Gram. What’s different this time is that I don’t want to go back. I want to break off of social media. I like how I feel better when I am off it. I should have realized that when I had to take a break in the first place. I just trailed off thought in my head applying this logic to smoking cannabis but I will revisit that at a later time. One vice at a time is my motto.

I feel better off of social media because I am not as anxious as much. I hate the phrase “gives me anxiety” because I feel like it’s overused and thrown around a lot but yet as I typed that sentence I thought, maybe it’s overused because a lot of people are on social media and they haven’t made that connection. Yes, there are other events, people, & situations that give you anxiety but I think those moments do not linger like social media does. I think a lot of people try to escape those feelings with social media and they could just be compounding those feelings.

I don’t know if the assumptions I made in the previous paragraphs are true for everyone but that has been my experience and the more I talk about it with people, the more I hear similar reports. I agree with the idea that there is too much information for people. We haven’t evolved yet to our new environment. We not only get every single news story for every corner of the world but you get millions and millions of opinions on those same news stories. It’s too much to download.

Can the problem be me? Surely there must be countless examples of people that can use social media in a healthy way. Balance their times on the app vs off. Have healthy interactions. Have healthy for you pages. But if I am being honest I don’t think it’s a majority. I think those would be outliers that have above average emotional intelligence and discipline. For the average person balancing your screen time is already a sign of an unhealthy habit. Drinkers that do not have a problem with alcohol do not need to moderate their drinking. Their natural behavior already does that without effort. The person with a problem has to set time restrictions on their phone so they don’t use social media more than an hour a day. That’s what I do to my 10 year old. It’s not healthy behavior.

Removing social media apps off of my phone did not cure my struggles. I still have the same stresses I had before but it’s not a 24/7 feeling. I feel anxiety about my job when I am working. I feel anxiety about comedy, when I’m going to do comedy. There is not constant comparison to other people which for me, causes me to constantly evaluate my position. There is a time to evaluate your position for planning goals, etc but to constantly do that causes me to stagnate because now I’m constantly looking at where I am at vs focusing on where I’m going.