it feels important to share with you again that this project isn’t intended to persuade you to live life without social media.

this isn’t about me doing something right and you doing something wrong.

i don’t think my choice is better than yours.

i share this because in this choice – the choice to live life without social media – i experience great freedom and i want you to know that if you want it, you can have it.  

because of this choice, i’ve had many conversations about socials with people from the ages of twelve to eighty-seven and the most common response i hear when people discover i don’t use socials is, “good for you!” usually followed by, “i wish i could do that.”

odd, isn’t it?

not exclusively, but commonly in pre-teens, teens, and young adults, there seems to be a genuine desire to be on socials in order to feel ‘included’, ‘relevant’, or to ‘know what everyone is doing’, but this is seemingly always paired with dread, obligation, or a perceived demand to ‘keep up’.  this perceived demand is combined with the requirement to post well.  to have funny, attractive, or popular content; to have more followers than their peers; and to have a real-time knowledge of all the goings-on of their schools, social groups, and friendship politics.

sound familiar?

i don’t think this is exclusive to young people.

in young adults and adults, there seems to be a lot lower desire to be on socials.  adults in general, seem slightly more aware of the way socials impact their social, mental, emotional, and spiritual health but they feel a deep obligation to keep engaging.  i often hear things like ‘i want to stay in contact with people who live far away’; or to ‘this is how i keep an eye on my kids’ socials’; or ‘i have to promote my business’; or some version of ‘this is how i impact the world’.

i’m not here to comment on if these are ‘good enough’ reasons to stay on socials, but what i can observe from these conversations is that most people on socials seem to have days or weeks or months in which they wish they weren’t.

in general, when it comes to social media, there seems to be a lot more in the ‘i actually hate this’ column than there is in the ‘everything is awesome’ column.

last week, someone who uses socials and admittedly ‘wishes he didn’t’ said this to me:

“at first smoking was worst thing you could do to yourself.  then ‘sitting’ became the new smoking.  now social media is the new smoking.  there may be nothing worse we do to ourselves.”

i wonder if this is how people felt when they’d been smoking for years and then discovered it was killing them.  though they’d gained the awareness that the choice was profoundly damaging, they were too far in, too addicted, too satisfied with the get-back to stop.

does that sound like where you are in your relationship with socials?

even if you know it’s bad for you, quitting something after you’ve become addicted takes big fish muscles.

understanding big fish muscles is important.  it originates from something my mom used to say to my siblings and me when we were growing up.  she explained that our lives would be an unending road of choices.  and those choices would be primarily influenced by one thing: whether or not we felt the need to do what everyone else was doing.  she called it ‘the ability to swim upstream’ or ‘stand against the flow’.

i call it big fish muscles because muscles develop slowly, over time, with consistent use and careful intent.  developing the ability to ‘swim upstream’, not to do what everyone else is doing just because everyone else is doing it – takes time and practice.  it requires consistency and careful intent.

it’s important to note that this is not non-conformity for the sake of non-conformity.  it’s exercising independent thought for the purpose of exploring what the right choice is, regardless of the crowd.

it’s also important to note that this is not encouragement to ‘create truth’.  truth cannot be created.  it either is or it isn’t.  this ain’t about ‘your truth’ because there’s no such thing.  truth just is.  it exists with or without our opinions, positions, or greatest intellectual musings.

the truth is that social media, though an incredible tool for observation, consumption, marketing, and instant connectivity, has an incredibly damaging effect on social, mental, and emotional health.  people can feel isolated, bullied, taunted, excluded, and ‘less than’ with one easy pull of the thumb.

i’ll say again that my objective is not to get anyone to stop using socials.  my objective is to share the freedom i experience in not engaging with them, and there is great freedom here. for me, there is enough in the world that is hard to process, accept, or reconcile in my mind, heart, and soul.  

there are enough harmful addictions to battle.

real, abiding friendships are not common.  

finding value in eternal things and not earthly things is a constant war.  

fighting the ‘less than’ voices of the world is exhausting.  

maintaining meaningful connection is a full-time job.  

filtering out wasteful stimuli to produce things that have impact is always uphill.  

and for me living without socials is one choice that alleviates all of the above.

i ask you for no commitment and hold you to no obligation.  i call you not to some arbitrary standard of my own making.  i only ask you to consider what impact social media has on your mental, emotional, and social health, and how that impacts those around you.  what you do with your findings is entirely up to you, but be reminded: you are not required to use it.  

you do not have to do it just because it’s what people do.  

and in fact, you may find that in swimming upstream, you may break out of the crowded masses and find yourself wild, in a glorious place of freedom, with the space to see and the stillness to hear things you haven’t since you picked up the nasty mag.  

this is life without social media.

 this is life. Unchained.

 love, Nic